[zer0faith]

oh boy, here we go, Hello, there I am helping a friend out by installing W7 on her new machine.
My problem starts after I finish the initial setup process in W7 & select which partition to install the OS onto, I choose the necessary partition I then click next and Windows starts to do it's thing, copying data etc 'then after a while it goes ahead with it's first reboot, once rebooted it returns with the: "Press any key to boot from CD..." dialog, like it does early on during the install but this time it usually disappears and the windows install resumes automatically, but after 3-5 minutes the "Press any key to boot from CD..." dialog still remains (Just hangs)until the screen goes black and & unresponsive to any input. I set the bios to boot from cd.
I also tried to install my own copy of XP on her machine and had an almost identical experience except the "Press any key to boot from CD..." dialog had a odd looking character at the end of the dots like this: "Press any key to boot from CD...!"( the exclamation mark refers to where the character appeared.) I cant type it to show you because it doesn't exist on this keyboard!

Prior to install There was an installation of Ubuntu on a 300gb+ partition that was formatted FAT32 but has since been deleted.
For some reason there was also an empty 6gb and 3gb partition There's also a 80gb "backup" Partition with around 60 gb free.
and a small 9mb of unallocated space
I deleted All partitions except the 80gb backup partition & the 9mb unallocated which I couldn't consolidate/merge probably because windows needs it.
created a new 400gb NTFS Partition,

this all may be a hardware issue.

I have successfully installed Windows many times before on several different machines.

Asus P5Q Pro, intel quad 3.00ghz, 2gb - 4gb ram, 9800gtx+ 1gb

Any help is appreciated, my friend could use some good news right about now.

[helpful]

Sounds like a corrupt mbr from the linux install.

If you have not done a backup already, please make sure you backup his computer before you attempt this.

1. Please follow the below instrcutions to enter the command prompt from the windows 7 dvd http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...torial147.html

2. Type in the command console "bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr" (minus quotes)

3. Reboot

[zer0faith]

Thanks for the info, I thought it may have been something to do with Linux (No offense meant). Does the suggested procedure effect the entire volume of the disk? The only data I need to preserve is on another partition, it contains around 20-30 GB. In order to back it up I will have to remove the HDD, install it to another PC and then backup the data, format - then return it to "her" PC and then try to fix the MBR issue, oh boy, this is gonna hurt, I'll return after I read your suggestion,
thank you again.

[helpful]

Yes, it is quite possible could impact the other partitions. The MBR boot code is shared on the same sector as the master partition table.

I am worried that resetting the mbr boot code "could" corrupt the master partition table since it was written by Ubuntu and not microsoft as the bootsect tool expects.

Microsoft states bootsect "Updates the master boot record without changing the partition table" and I have used this command myself quite few times without any data loss. However, I cannot recommend this without backing up your data first.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...8WS.10%29.aspx

[zer0faith]

Thanks for that detail, I understand & appreciate your concern, I will start with a back-up and go from there, back in a few hours or so I guess.
Very useful link, cheers.

[zer0faith]

I am so lost for time! OK I have her HDD in my PC, backed up all 30GB of data. I wanted to know if there was any other measures I could take to ensure good HDD operation before returning it to her machine and attempting the MBR fix, error check etc. I considered deleting all partitions & formatting to NTFS. Here are some basic details of the disk:
Western Digital 500gb SATA/16mb cache - 5000AAKS Caviar Blue
I appologise if I seem a bit anal, it's just caution really.
thanks again.

[TerryNet]

Western Digital has diagnostics for their products.

If you decide to "wipe" the drive and re-partition and format it I suggest to use multiple partitions. One for each operating system and one or more for data.

[zer0faith]

Thanks to all for your advice, after deleting all partitions I was able to format & install W7 OK, I didn't need to use the bootsect method in this particular case but I have a collection of HDDs that I will be pulling out of the shed soon, lol. The info I was given came in very handy, I have learnt quite a lot regarding these particular issues.
thank you very much helpful,
till next time.