Member Avatar for alexispowers08

when i install Windows 7 it stops at 27% in the expanding Windows portion of the install. Help, please.

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Couple of quick realities and a plan you can try right now.

You cannot do an in-place upgrade from XP to Windows 7. You need to choose Custom (advanced) and perform a clean install. Back up first; apps will need reinstalling. If you start setup from within XP and choose Custom without formatting, Windows may place your old files in a Windows.old folder for later copy-out.

A stall at 27% during "Expanding Windows files" is usually bad install media or a hardware/driver hiccup. Work through these in order:

  • Recreate the installer. If you burned a DVD, reburn at a slow speed and/or try a different drive. Better: make a bootable USB with the Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool and install from USB ().
  • Unplug non-essential hardware (extra USB devices, extra drives), and try with a single RAM stick if you have multiple.
  • Check disk and RAM health. From XP, open an elevated command prompt and run:
chkdsk c: /r

Then run an overnight memory test; any errors mean replace/reshuffle RAM (MemTest86).

  • Storage drivers/BIOS: Update the BIOS. In BIOS, temporarily toggle the SATA mode (AHCI <-> IDE/Compatibility) and retry. At the disk selection screen, use Load Driver to supply your chipset/SATA/RAID driver from the PC/motherboard vendor.
  • If it still hangs, press Shift+F10 during setup, then review setupact.log/setuperr.log in X:\Windows\Panther or C:\Windows\Panther to pinpoint the failing file/driver (Windows Setup log files).

is right that your exact specs matter here; some older chipsets need a vendor storage driver before Windows 7 can expand files. is also spot-on about doing a clean install.

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Member Avatar for Xlphos

Have you enough space left on the drive?

How about you give us some more info like have you installed from scratch, ie formatted the entire drive or if have you partitioned the drive?

It may be beneficial to post your system spec aswell.

Member Avatar for caperjack

" upgrading from XP to 7"
from what i read you cant upgrade from xp to win7 ,you need to do a format and install win7

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