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I am servicing a brand-new Asus Essentio desktop for a friend. They just recently got it,and hate Windows 8 (who doesn't?!). We bought Windows 7-64 Professional to replace it. I pulled the drive, hooked it to another PC, backed up their files, then wiped the drive using Minitool Partition Wizard, writing 0's to all sectors to make sure Windows 8 is GONE. The drive is a Seagate 1 TB unit.

I created a 100 GB boot partition and another for storage. Replaced the drive in the PC, the drive shows up in BIOS. I put the Windows 7 DVD in and set the optical drive to boot first. After pressing a key to boot from DVD, Windows Setup loads files off the DVD for a minute. Then comes the windows 4 section color logo, and all activity stops at that point. Left it alone for over an hour, nothing, Setup will not proceed. Left everything in BIOS alone at defaults. Tried again switching from AHCP to RAID and IDE modes, no good. I can't figure out what to do and why Setup won't get going. Before removing Windows 8, the system booted fine and was stable, no issues to suggest a failing drive, etc. I'm going to check it with SeaTools anyway just in case.

Could the BIOS still on the MB be for Windows 8 only, and blocking Win 7 setup? Do I need to flash back to an earlier/Windows 7 compatible BIOS? This is not fun!

Hennes
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user193763
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2 Answers2

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Agree with Karan - sounds like a Secure Boot problem.

But it could be your partitioning.

It's best to create the necessary partitions during the installation as you may not be providing the proper partitioning. Especially if the system is EFI only and doesn't support BIOS boot.

Assuming you're sticking with EFI, then you need to boot the install disk in EFI mode. Creating the partitions during install will provide the EFI system partition and the MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition).

If you're not going with EFI but want a GPT partitioned drive than you need a BIOS Boot partition (small and raw). Plus you'll want to boot the installation media in non-EFI mode.

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I would just run DBAN on it and do a 1 layer wipe of the whole drive. That will kill any partitions. : )

Don Tillman
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