Having trouble installing from recovery media to new hard drive

[Encrypted Existence]

Hello all. I have an HP Media Center PC (m8517c) here that I installed a brand new HDD in (2 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm) and it absolutely will not allow me to install from the customer's recovery discs (19 of them to be exact) or from the factory install media that I ordered from HP. At what seems to be the very end of the install I get a "windows could not install on this hardware" error message. I have done some googling and found that there are known issues with trying to install Windows on a newer "advanced format" drive using HP recovery media. I am making a "universal" install disc as we speak that I will try using. Can anyone shed some light or experience on this for me? Thanks in advance.

 

[PCX]

Advanced format drive. It wont happen with those recovery disks.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

I just had a look at the BIOS settings for the HDD controller (I know...should've been one of the first things that I checked) and it was set to RAID. I switched it to AHCI and I am gonna give it another whirl. I will try the IDE setting if that doesn't work.

 

[johnrobert]

I would also try a diferent HD just to test, maybe it does not like 2 tb being an old computer

 

[HCHTech]

You could mount an non-advanced-format drive, do the recovery from his media, then clone the drive to the new advanced-format drive. There is another thread that discusses the WDAlign utility for WD drives here:

I believe Seagate has a similar utility.

 

[PCX]

You could mount an non-advanced-format drive, do the recovery from his media, then clone the drive to the new advanced-format drive. There is another thread that discusses the WDAlign utility for WD drives here:

I believe Seagate has a similar utility.

It does not work half the time . . . one of the main issues I see with doing this is you will not be able to update Windows.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

I believe Seagate has a similar utility.

I do not believe that Seagate has an alignment utility as their newer drives are equipped with what they call smartalign technology.

Link: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/en-GB/whitepaper/mb6101_smartalign_technology_faq.pdf

 

[krtechsolutions]

There is a special boot disk from hp, you have to boot to that cd then insert the recovery disk

 

[Encrypted Existence]

There is a special boot disk from hp, you have to boot to that cd then insert the recovery disk

Unfortunately this method does not work with Vista HP recovery media. The white paper (link below) states that I will not be able to install HP recovery media on an advanced format drive and that I will have to use M$ media to reinstall.

Quote: "Windows Vista: HP Workstation recovery media cannot be used to install Windows Vista on AF drives because the partitioning and installation steps cannot be easily separated. You can install Windows Vista from Microsoft media or other sources using the guidelines above."

Link:http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03245616.pdf

Thanks for all of the replies. At least I know for sure what direction that I need to be headed towards now.

 

[johnrobert]

Media Center is XP with a few upgrades not worth having

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Media Center is XP with a few upgrades not worth having

The machine is an HP Media Center PC but the OS not a media center version. The COA on this machine is tied to Vista Home Premium.

 

[HCHTech]

Thanks for the head's up on this, PCX - it sounds like you've been down this road once or twice.

This is going to be an issue as AF drives start becoming the norm.

 

[732914TECH]

i still think using a normal hdd to restore the cds from then cloning that drive to the new one should still work.

 

[PCX]

It may on a Seagate (can't remember), but it most def wont work on AF WD HDDs.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Update: I was able to complete the install using a retail Vista Ultimate disc and plugging in the customer's COA to activate (I know, I know). Just wanted to post my solution. Thanks for all the replies.