I am hoping someone can give me a suggestion. A nearly new (except for 1 month as a data drive) WD 640 Gig laptop drive (WD640BPVT) is driving me crazy because I cannot get it to load a re-install of Vista SP1 on a 2 year old Acer laptop. The drive passes all tests with WD and also Acrosis and HD Tune. SMART parameters are all 100% and WD Lifeguard Diagnostics all show “Pass”. I have not RMAing the drive because it passes its tests.
I am familiar with MS OS’s since Dos 5 and have no problems in the past changing drives, upgrading OS’s, resizing partitions, fighting viruses but his has me pulling my hair. Now is a personal challenge!!
My Frustration
I want to install a new WD640BPVT advanced format HD in my Acrer 8930G laptop.
The problem is after I have reinstalled the Acer Vista OS from the Acer Back Up DVDs and after it asks for a re-start. I will; restart the Acer and it starts to install and configure and then the laptop stops and I get the message “Windows setup could not configure Windows to run on this computers hardware”.
The Acer is unmodified and I am running the Acer factory Operating System which is Vista SP1. The laptop and the OS is not moded, hacked or changed from when it was purchased. I formatted the new drive.
To solve this I have:
Run virus scan, ran WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, ran WD Align again and it shows the drive as correctly aligned, I made a new set of install discs and verified them and tried to install from them, I Googled the problem, I googled looking for problems with the laptop, i partitioned the WD640BPVT to 300 G, formatted and tried to re-install, I aligned it again and tried to re-install. It always runs to the set up stage and then it always gives the same message so I know it is not a bios issue with the 640 gig size. I think I did the install about 7 times. I frustration I took an 320 Gig HD out of my external hard drive and put it in the laptop and I did 2 reinstalls and both worked using that hard drive. I found I could re-install, setup and start successfully from either back up set of DVD’s so I know both sets of install DVD’s are good as is the laptops DVD drive.
I want to install a larger HD. I do have the benefit of the fact that the Acer is working fine and I have its 320 Gig HD to put back in it while I resolve this.
What have I missed? What is wrong?
You will note the laptop is working (it is waiting for a larger hd), I verified the reinstall DVD’s will work by successfully reinstalling the OS to a different hd, its been virus scanned by Avast and AVG. I ran WD Align because it was used briefly in an XP machine but its been re-formatted about 5 times since then. I even re-ran WD Align it says the disk is fine.
Suggestions pleeese?
John
