I made a promise that I'd start a blog after installing Windows 7. Time to contribute more back to my community.
I'm working on a touchscreen version of a document imaging user interface that I've been developing for a while. We ordered a Dell Studio with a touchscreen, a quad core CPU, 750GB disk and 4GB of ram; it arrived and the system is pretty good in all respects except one -- it came pre-installed with Vista.
Little needs to be said about Vista -- I'm sure Microsoft are appropriately chagrined and embarrassed, deep down where it matters -- and they have done an awesome job with Windows 7, so I was rarin' to go to install it. Especially since it purports to have native multitouch support.
However, the Dell, bless its titanium foot, wouldn't install Windows 7. It would get to the "Completing Installation" step, and then would freeze. No mouse response, no keyboard response (ctrl-alt-del not working), and no animating dots. Googled for similar cases, found several, and most successful resolutions of the problem were effected by restoring BIOS default settings or by physically removing hardware such as RAM, video cards, or card readers and the like.
Try doing that on a all in one computer like the Dell. I couldn't even find any screws to open the case.
So I fiddled with the BIOS settings, disabling what I could. Even tried disabling the USB controller entirely, but then the damn thing wouldn't even get past POST. I did a clean installation after each BIOS change, but every time it would freeze at the same place.
I tried installing about 6-7 times. I even tried installing Vista and then performing an upgrade inplace -- ultimately, the same result.
But now, my friend, for the useful bit -- I got it working and here's how:
Downloaded GA11N-A101.zip from ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/ and installed it using Vista.
Then did a clean full install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64bit .
And it's sweet.
Hooray!
I'm working on a touchscreen version of a document imaging user interface that I've been developing for a while. We ordered a Dell Studio with a touchscreen, a quad core CPU, 750GB disk and 4GB of ram; it arrived and the system is pretty good in all respects except one -- it came pre-installed with Vista.
Little needs to be said about Vista -- I'm sure Microsoft are appropriately chagrined and embarrassed, deep down where it matters -- and they have done an awesome job with Windows 7, so I was rarin' to go to install it. Especially since it purports to have native multitouch support.
However, the Dell, bless its titanium foot, wouldn't install Windows 7. It would get to the "Completing Installation" step, and then would freeze. No mouse response, no keyboard response (ctrl-alt-del not working), and no animating dots. Googled for similar cases, found several, and most successful resolutions of the problem were effected by restoring BIOS default settings or by physically removing hardware such as RAM, video cards, or card readers and the like.
Try doing that on a all in one computer like the Dell. I couldn't even find any screws to open the case.
So I fiddled with the BIOS settings, disabling what I could. Even tried disabling the USB controller entirely, but then the damn thing wouldn't even get past POST. I did a clean installation after each BIOS change, but every time it would freeze at the same place.
I tried installing about 6-7 times. I even tried installing Vista and then performing an upgrade inplace -- ultimately, the same result.
But now, my friend, for the useful bit -- I got it working and here's how:
Downloaded GA11N-A101.zip from ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/ and installed it using Vista.
Then did a clean full install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64bit .
And it's sweet.
Hooray!
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