Solved: Win7 on HP Pavilion Elite?

Got an HP Pavilion Elite m9405f desktop here, came loaded with Vista, but since the hard drive died, I've decided to install Win7 on the new drive. HP shows full driver support for it.

Problem I'm having is, when booting from the Win7 install disc, I get the "Windows is loading files" screen with the white bar going across once quickly, then again slowly... then... nothing. Blank screen.

The monitor isn't going to sleep, so I'm pretty sure the machine is still active. I've tried both VGA and DVI ports on the installed video card; I've also removed it and tried the onboard video. I've gone through every combination of options for the "primary video adapter" option in the BIOS (Onboard, PCI, PCI-e x16, PCI-e x1). Same results, every time. It's almost as if it's going into a graphics mode that my monitor doesn't support... except it's connected to a 17" LCD that does 1280x1024 just fine; it SHOULDN'T be a problem.

"<F9> System Diagnostics" option at POST doesn't show any errors either (other than the lack of a bootable hard drive).

 

Is your Win7 a Full Install DVD? or an Win7 Upgrade DVD?

 

Full version.

I actually figured it out... somehow. Machine came with 6GB RAM (2xGB and 2x1GB). I popped the 1GB sticks out... and it installed fine. Put them back in afterward, and it still works fine. System diagnostics said all the RAM was fine.

I dunno... very strange, never seen anything quite like that.