Win 7 Pro will not boot after clean install.

[roachient]

Installed Win 7 Pro on a system with GA-Z97N-WIFI Mother board, 6 1TB hard drives, 4GB Ram. The install went fine like normal, but it will not boot up. Once I just hit the escape key and it came to a Red screen with many boot options, I used the straight Load Windows and it worked. How can I force it to do this normally?

 

[friedlander.m.s]

Open the bios and set the boot order.
If the right drive boots first, then it will probably run.

 

[roachient]

I did go into the BIO's, set it up as a mirrored RAID. Set the correct boot order. The box is a Fractal that can handle 6 drives, 2 - 4GB DDR3 1333 for a total of 8GB, but the system treats each DIMM as 2GB, I did wipe out the part-ions on the drive and created new then formatted the drives to insure they are clean. Did a fresh install, they got the error. windows could not complete the install, restart the install

 

[roachient]

After resetting the RAID to Redundant, and re-installing Win 7. ERROR 'Windows could not install on the hardware" followed by "Windows could not complete the installation." Any suggestions?

 

[GeorgettaCZ]

I guess, you are trying to build some sort of "NAS/data storage" by using such a tiny mobo with 6 HDDs in a hardware RAID? Mirror/strip mix??;o))) Why not... BUT!
I think only dedicated RAID/SAS cards are able to mix those variants. These low-end HW raid chips on common end-user/non-business mobos can only do either mirror or strip but not both at the same time from more drives attached. Anyway...

HW related ideas:
1. Did you update to the latest stable BIOS version?
2. Did you check the memory support list of the mobo? Look for file mb_memory_ga-z97n-wifi.pdf and check ram modules.
3. Try switch the modules in the banks. Check if they are single-sided or dual-sided (SS / DS).
4. Try only 1 module at the time. Is it recognized as 4GB or 2 GB??
5. Other RAM modules to test, both SS and/or DS? Even with higher frequency?

SW related ideas:
1. From where do you install windows? DVD/USB?
I guess you use 64-bit variant to cover large capacity of the potential array, right? RAID drivers present on the source installation device??
2. Other source of installation available? Once I met a "rotten" USB with Win 7 installation...and saw "Windows could not complete the installation." as well...
3. Other version of windows available? Just to test, W10 Pro x64?

Let us know, how are you getting on and /or eventually solved it!

Bye

 

[GeorgettaCZ]

WOW, accordind to manual, it can run RAID 10!! now, I would like to see that...