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13873
Dell 1720 Vista Install is Stalling...
Dell 1720 Inspiron
4gb memory
Windows Vista 32bit
I've been having a problem with my Dell 1720 Laptop getting too slow upon startup. The little green wind-up bar comes up right away, and then the screen would flicker as it was waiting for the Vista symbol, but then it would take about 2 minutes to get there. When it finally got booted, only about half of the icons by the clock would show up, and then the laptop would stall for a while until the rest finally got started. All this was being done even when I already modified the msconfig to selective startup and turned off unnecessary programs from starting.
So.....
I decided it was time to just reinstall Windows Vista Home Premium. Tried to find the recovery partition, bou I couldn't access it at all, even with disks. Something was goofed up. So... I just decided to do it the old fashioned way. I put in the disk, and went to the Windows install area. I made sure to completely delete the useless extra partitions since I couldn't get the recovery to work anyway, so I ended up with 140gb of unallocated space on one partition.
I clicked to have Windows Vista installed there. It starts installing just fine.
Copying Windows files - Check
Expanding Files - check
Installing features - check
Installing Updates - check
***Laptop Restarts automaticly***
Completing Installation - gets going and the little 3 ...'s continue to move after the Completing Installation text, but the green progress bar at the bottom just stops and doesn't move. The Hard Drive activity light flickers once about every 15 seconds at best. It's been sitting that way for 2 hours now and the green bar has not moved.
What I'm wondering is if possibly the hard drive is failing, or possibly the memory? Processor?
Rokkaholik
27 Posts
0
September 1st, 2009 18:00
Anyone?!?!?
Rokkaholik
27 Posts
0
September 2nd, 2009 11:00
Nevermind... Google is my friend. I found the solution
Go to BIOS ---> Onboard Devices
Go to Flash Cache Module - Turn it OFF
Go to SATA Operation - Change AHCI to ATA
Once that was done, I went to reinstall Vista again, I formatted the drive first, and then started with the Vista install and it went through without a hitch.
bgeorge89
1 Message
0
September 12th, 2009 12:00
I greatly appreciate the fact that you posted your solution despite the fact that no one helped you. I was just having the same exact problem (same PC and everything). I was trying to find a solution when I came across your thread. This worked for me. Again, many thanks.
Rokkaholik
27 Posts
0
September 12th, 2009 14:00
The fix only worked when there was ONE hard drive in the Laptop... When I'd put the secondary drive in, it wouldn't communicate with the main drive and would lock up. I found that I could use my drive as ACHI, but had to follor Sherlock_holmes advice in this thread with a little modification..
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19246800/19546192.aspx#19546192
Here's his solution:
""I had to down load the driver pack R154200 and load to flash drive ( exstract all files to the root of flash drive) and
inject on initial install only the i aahci. cat and iastor drivers ( you can only install 1 driver at a time so ensure u load both drivers before you continue install). This
then allowed the dell vista premium disc to run in fully without freezing
and causing blue screen crash. You can load the drivers prior to the install screen of the dell os disc ( it does state load drivers)""
What I DID...
I downloaded the R154200 driver pack from the Dell webpage. I then extracted the files and just burned them ALL to a CDR. Go toyour Bios on the 1720 and turn the Drive operation back to ACHI. When Vista comes up during Install, there's an option to Load Drivers. Take out the OS disk and put in the CDR of drivers. It'll look for the only ones compatible with your system and it'll find only one. Install it, and then take out the CDR and put the OS disk back in and complete the installation. I then put back in the secondary hard drive and they would communicate