Windows installer can't see the main drive, but I can boot from it

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MrYossu

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Dec 15, 2013
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My PC (specs below) currently has Windows 10 Pro 64-bit installed, but I'm having a lot of issues with it. I have come to the conclusion that a recent Windows update has introduced something that is incompatible with my hardware, and have decided to revert back to Windows 7 (which is what was installed on the PC when I got it).

I have the original Dell Windows installation CD that came with the machine, so decided to boot from that. However, when it came to the stage where you choose where to install Windows, it didn't show anything. I tried rescanning, etc, but it wouldn't recognise the main drive (nor the secondary one that I forgot to disconnect before rebooting).

So, I can't install Windows 7, as it won't recognise the main drive. Out of interest, I created a Windows 10 installation USB and booted from that. Once I got to the same stage, it recognised both existing partitions on both drives, so it's obviously not a hardware or partition issue.

I can boot into my current (somewhat crippled) Windows 10 installation, so again, the drives seem to be fine.

Anyone any ideas? I really want to reinstall Windows 7.

Thanks for any help you can give.

PC specs
Computer Type: PC/Desktop

System Manufacturer/Model Number: Dell Precision 5810

OS: Win 10 Pro 64-bit

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1630 v3 @ 3.70GHz

Motherboard: Dell 0HHV7N (SOCKET 1) version A00

Memory: 40Gb

Graphics Card: 2 x AMD FirePro W4100

Sound Card: onboard

Monitor(s) Displays: 4 monitors

Screen Resolution: one at 2560x1440, three at 1920x1080

Keyboard: Standard Dell UK USB keyboard

Mouse: Anker wireless vertical mouse

Hard Drives: 1Tb Samsung SSD and 1Tb WD HDD. Usually have a 6Tb Seagate external drive plugged in for backups

Antivirus: ESET Endpoint Antivirus
 
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Windows 7 (or at least my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit) does not recognize the newer GPT partition scheme, it uses the older BIOS style compatibility scheme. Windows 10 uses GPT partitions. It may be (or might not be) that the Windows 10 partitioning has caused Windows 7 to not recognize the disk. If this is the case you could perhaps boot under a Linux live DVD and run something like "dd" to wipe the disk (or any disk utility which can completely zero the disk). After this the GPT signature would be gone and possibly Windows 7 would be able to work with this again (GPT puts a "protective MBR" in which more or less marks the disk as filled and unusable...this is to prevent systems which are not aware of GPT from trying to "fix" the GPT disks and thus break them).

Related to this you may find you have a "compatibility" mode available in the BIOS to force the system to use old style BIOS during boot instead of UEFI (UEFI and GPT go together). Forcing this to BIOS mode could help if the disk was not already formatted as GPT.
 
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Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I have reinstalled Windows 10 over and over again, and although it seems to work briefly, it always breaks fairly soon after. See a thread I posted about it elsewhere[1] for more details.

It looks like Windows 10 is having compatibility issues with my PC, which is why I want to go back to Windows 7. Not sure why you say its a pain to get working. I never had any problems with it in the past. What did you mean?

I did wonder about wiping the disk, but was reluctant to try it in case I had the same problem. I have backups (a clone and a disk image) of the drive, so could recover, but having been through that before, am not keen to risk it again unless I'm pretty confident that the Windows 7 installation would work.

As it happens, I don't have UEFI mode enabled in the BIOS, so I don't think that would be the issue anyway.

Any other ideas? Thanks again.

[1] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start-win_menu/start-button-cortana-etc-not-working/c6866955-b0ab-4949-9fda-2530f1953125?messageId=a4bd51ba-550f-4bb9-ace2-5837cb2fa53f&page=1
 
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This may indicate that there's some physical issue with your hardware. Have you checked health of your hard drive?

Issues with windows 7 are - you have to install a ton of updates to get it fully updated.
Best part being - windows updates don't work when you install fresh windows 7.
You have to install 14 hotfixes manually to get from sp1 to state of functional windows update.
 
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Yup, I installed HDTune and it showed the main drive was healthy. As I said, I can boot from it, so I would be surprised if there were any hardware issues serious enough to cause this problem.


What? That's insane? Is this something new? I have done plenty of fresh Win7 installs in the past, and didn't have this problem. As it happens, I installed Win7 on my lap top a few months ago (tried Win10, but had compatibility issues with the video driver so reverted) and it all went smooth as anything,

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing with you, I'm just very surprised.


That sounds awful.

What do I do then? Windows 10 is crippled, and if it is an incompatibility issue (which seems very likely), then no amount of repairing or reinstalling it is going to help. What other options do I have?

Thanks again.
 
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Just to test this out, I got a spare HDD that had previously had Win10 on it, and tried to install Win7. Had the same issue.

I then created a bootable Linux USB, and tried to use dd to wipe it. I did...

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

...as found here[1], but got the message "dd failed to open '/dev/sda': Permission denied"

What do I need to do? Bear in mind I know very little about Linux, so please explain in words of one syllable!

Thanks again

[1] https://www.marksanborn.net/howto/wiping-a-hard-drive-with-dd/
 
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Well - if storage devices are not being detected, then you need to provide storage controller driver during installation.
I'd assume you intend to install windows onto Samsung SSD. Right? What's the model name? Is it sata drive? NVME drive?
For sata you'd have to provide sata controller driver - probably Intel Rapid storage driver.
For nvme drive, this would be more complicated - you'd need to integrate hotfixes into installation:
KB2990941
KB3087873.

Assuming you have a sata drive:
  • disconnect all drives except samsung ssd;
    boot from windows installation media;
    load sata controller driver;
    clean ssd using diskpart (Shift+F10 to launch command prompt);
    install windows 7;
    install all those 14 hotfixes to fix windows update
    • service pack 1 (KB976932);
      KB3020369
      KB3125574

      KB3075851
      KB3078601
      KB3083324
      KB3083710
      KB3102810
      KB3109094
      KB3112343
      KB3135445
      KB3138612
      KB3145739
      KB3164033
      KB3168965
    run windows updates to fully update windows;
    reconnect all drives.
That's about it.

BTW - you can integrate all those hotfixes and drivers into windows installation. Then none of that manual hotfix installation is necessary.
 
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Wow, you lost me there! First off, I'm trying this out on a spare disk for the moment. It's a Western Digital Blue 500Gb, and is SATA. Assuming that all works, then I'll try it out on the SSD.

However, I don't understand about loading the sata driver. I did a search, and found this[1], but it's an .exe file, which I won't be able to run from inside the Windows installer. I can't run it in advance, because the HDD is blank. How do I get the driver in so that the installer will see the drive?

Please could you explain in more detail. Thanks again.

[1] https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27400/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-User-Interface-and-Driver?product=55005
 
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Not mine. I've tried. Like everything else, Windows 7 earlier install disks seem to differ from later install disks.
 
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Run the exe, select "extract only", choose location to extract.
Drivers will be extracted into:
\Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-enterprise-Driver_MYJ0N_WIN_4.6.0.1048_A01\Drivers\win7\AHCI\x64
Copy them to installation media and load during windows installation.
 
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Hmm, I got something different. First off, the default location was C:\Dell\Drivers\G2V74, not the one you mentioned. Also, when I copied them and treied loading a driver, it said it couldn't find any.

Here is the contents of the Version.txt file that was included in case it helps...

Title: Storage Controller: Intel Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise Edition Driver
Version: A00-00 WP0000034730
OEM Name:
OEM Version: 4.0.0.1045
Computers: Precision: T7810, T5810
OS: Windows 7 32-bit - Professional, Windows 8.1 64-bit - 8.1, Windows 8.1 32-bit - 8.1, Windows 8.1 32-bit - 8.1 SL (Single Language), Windows 7 32-bit - Home Premium, Windows 8.1 64-bit - 8.1 SL (Single Language), Windows 8 64-bit - Pro, Windows 7 64-bit - Home Premium, Windows 7 64-bit - Home Basic, Windows 8.1 32-bit - 8.1 Pro, Windows 8 64-bit - H, Windows 7 64-bit - Ultimate, Windows 8.1 64-bit - 8.1 Pro, Windows 7 64-bit - Professional, Windows 8 32-bit - H, Windows 8 32-bit - Pro, Windows 7 32-bit - Home Basic, Windows 8 64-bit - EM, Windows 8 32-bit - EM, Windows 7 32-bit - Starter, Windows 7 32-bit - Ultimate
Languages: English
Created: 1/9/2015

Also, I pulled out a spare SDD that had Win7 installed (never seen Win10), and tried that. I had exactly the same issue. That makes three drives now that have shown the issue, only two of which had Win10 on them.

Any explanation?

Thanks again
 
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It's a long shot but you could be having issues with the partitioning leaving remnants on the drive.

Boot into a Windows installation whether it be 7 or 10 and go to advanced options. from there get to the command prompt.
Enter the following commands followed with pressing the enter/return key after each one.

diskpart

listdisk

select disk # (# being the disk you want to wipe)

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format quick fs=ntfs

exit

exit

After doing this you will have a truly clean drive and you can continue with an installation of Windows 7 or 10 and go through the normal steps to install and update Windows. For Windows 10 I recommend downloading the Windows Media Creation Tool and having a flash drive with at least 8GB and creating a bootable flash drive for isntallation with a fresh copy of Windows 10. You can perform the same steps as above on the flash drive before using it to make a bootable if you like, but make sure to run command prompt as administrator first when doing it inside of Windows.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't help. I tried this on the spare SSD that had WIn7 on (never seen Win10) and Windows installation still didn't recognise it.

Any other ideas? Thanks again.
 
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You extracted "Intel Rapid Storage Technology enterprise F6 Driver". That's ok.
Then during windows 7 installation you have to load drivers from subfolders:
  • iaStorA.free.win7.64bit.4.0.0.1040
    iaStorS.free.win7.64bit.4.0.0.1040

BTW - are sata drives connected to motherboard or some pci/pcie storage controller card? For example, if you're using LSI sata controller, then different drivers would be required.
 
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I gave up this morning, and took the PC to our local repair shop, and he spotted that the BIOS had RAID enabled, which didn't seem to be a problem for Windows 10, but was stopping the Windows 7 installer from seeing he disk. He changed that setting, and was able to run the Windows 7 installer.

No idea how this happened, as I hadn't changed it, and reset the BIOS, but at least that problem is now fixed.

I left the machine with him, and he's going to look at those issues and see if he can fix the Windows 10 install. If not, at least I will be able to install Windows 7.

Thanks again
 
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