Member Avatar for chez

Im no expert but I have tried and tried to get a clean install on my sons laptop. I followed the instructions from Dell's leaflet and put the Mediadirect cd and it wiped my harddrive then it asked me to put my OS disk in which I did. It loaded the files and asked me to choose UK and I then pressed install. It copied the windows files, then expanded files, installed features and installed updates last was completing installation which it never seemed to do, it stuck 3/4 of the way through and nearly an hour later the screen went black. I restarted the procedure again and again but still nothing. I did go into the BIOS and ask it to boot from CD/DVD as it was a matter of hitting the f12 to do it otherwise. What do I do, I have a laptop that has nothing on it and is useless and less than a year old. I thought that it would be straight forward and that I would get a clean install and be able to start again. How can I get round this, it is so frustrating please please help.

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A concise expert note that complements the thread and the helpful replies from , and .

The symptom described by (setup copying/expanding files, then stalling at the final “completing installation” phase and ending in a black screen with only the cursor) commonly points to the installer not having a required mass‑storage/controller driver or encountering unreadable installation media. On many Dell notebooks the SATA/RAID/AHCI controller may need an OEM driver supplied during the partition/driver step of setup; if the installer cannot properly talk to the drive the install can hang even after files are copied.

Practical checklist and clarifications:

  • Check BIOS SATA mode first (AHCI/RAID vs IDE/Compatibility). Switching to IDE/Compatibility before reinstalling can let the generic installer drivers work; if Windows is already installed, changing this afterwards can prevent booting unless the proper driver is enabled first.
  • If the installer prompts for additional drivers, supply the vendor driver from Dell driver media (or a USB stick with the correct chipset/storage driver). This is the specific gap that stopped setup in this thread.
  • Verify the optical media and drive (clean disc, try another DVD, or use a known-good USB installer). A damaged DVD can cause stalls that look like installer hangs. This echoes ’s cleaning suggestion and ’s note about long Vista installs.
  • Run Dell pre-boot diagnostics (F12) to test the hard disk and memory before repeating the install. If hardware faults appear, replacement or warranty service may be needed.

Final notes: Mediadirect/factory tools can remove recovery partitions; creating recovery media or requesting replacement recovery discs from Dell is recommended if the factory image is required. If problems persist after trying the above, hardware diagnostics (HDD SMART, memtest) are the next step.

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Member Avatar for sittas87

Hii there Sir
I assume this is the Operating disk that came with the laptop. When you try to BOOT again from the Disk, hitting a key when asked if you want to BOOT from disk, does it then boot from the disk,meaning does it go into a blue screen. For some reason something caused the the files not to finish it's installation

May I also ask what was the reaso/s for you doing a fresh Operating System installation


Cheers for now

Member Avatar for chez

Hii there Sir
I assume this is the Operating disk that came with the laptop. When you try to BOOT again from the Disk, hitting a key when asked if you want to BOOT from disk, does it then boot from the disk,meaning does it go into a blue screen. For some reason something caused the the files not to finish it's installation

May I also ask what was the reaso/s for you doing a fresh Operating System installation


Cheers for now

Yes it is the OS that came with the laptop. As I said previously it start loading then comes to a dead stop. How long should it take anyway? It lingers on completing installation for ever and then the screen goes black with only the arrow pointer on the screen. Nothing else happens thereafter. The reason why we decided to do a fresh OS installation is my son had messed up the laptop by deleting bits and things did not work properly, yes we tried system restore but still it was not right so a clean install was all we could think of, thinking it would be straight forward but obviously not

Member Avatar for hughv

This sounds like a defective/dirty disk. Take a good look at it for dirt and scratches.
Try cleaning the disk.
You might also try a repair install.
It's possible your laptop HD is defective. Did you have any HD issues previously?

Member Avatar for jdotsr1

Good Day Chez, I assume from the time frame of purchase referenced, that the machine cm with Windows Vista. If this is a poor assumption, please advise. If it is Vista, and the CD's are actually DVD's, it will take a huge amount of time. I have just completed a reload of a Lenovo laptop with Vista Business and it took, no exaggeration, 2 1/2 hours to reload with many pauses where I thought nothing was going on. If it wasn't for the HDD activity light, I would have thought it crashed during the process. If you don't get anywhere, and the cleaning process does not help, I would contact Dell Tech Support, report damaged media and request a new set of disks. They should provide them free of charge other than shipping.

Member Avatar for chez

Thanks for the responses. I have been away for a few days but I have solved the problem now. Though I would let you know what I did. When I arrived at the window that says where do you want to install windows in the bottom right I pressed drive options advance then I pressed load driver. I then removed my OS disk and put in my driver disk it then installed the driver it needed. I then removed the disk and put in my OS disk again and pressed the HD I wanted to install it on and hey presto it carried on with the installation. It was only because I was nosey and pressed the advanced options that I found it. Thought it would be worth a try and thankfully it was. Dell really should explain how to do this, you only get a thin leaflet that says put the OS in first and then install the rest of the software afterwards. So again thanks for your advice and my son is up and running again.

Member Avatar for sittas87

Well done

please mark the tread as solved

Regards
sittas

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