W7 Boot Manager error

[WhiteD3]

This is typical of the stupid situations I sometimes find myself in :(:(:(

I am trying to reformat and reinstall W7 64 onto an Asus N53SV laptop. I found that the DVD drive wasn't working and so swapped it with another from an identical laptop; still didn't work. Driver issue I assume.

No drama, just boot from a USB you say. I created bootable USB stick, copied the W7 install disk to it but the BIOS would not show the USB as a boot disk option.

I updated the BIOS to the latest version, plugged in the stick and it booted from the stick ok. W7 reformatted the HDD but got hung up in the install.

Now I have a laptop with a formatted HDD with no OS and a DVD drive that doesn't work. When I now reboot I get a Windows Boot Manager error "windows failed to start". This is because there's no OS on the HDD and the BIOS again won't recognise the USB as a boot option.

The BIOS gives me the choice of the HDD or DVD drive only.

Any suggestions would be welcome...............please...........:(

[Basil135]

Can you see the root of C: ?

If so, can you copy W7 from the USB over to the hard-drive, and then run the set-up from dos?

[WhiteD3]

How do I get into DOS from boot up?

[steveG]

Don't play with Asus gear much, but my offsider at work spent a few hours pulling his hair out when he rebuilt a couple of them before xmas.

From memory there was something in the bios that had to be disabled/enabled to allow booting from "legacy" devices.
If you've already booted from the USB with this bios version it doesn't sound like your issue, but might be worth checking.

Any chance the USB stick is flaky? Have you got another one you can try?

You said this hard disk was from an identical notebook. Have you tried putting the disk back in the original machine and trying the install from there. Could be a hardware issue with the one you're trying to build on...

Steve

[WhiteD3]

Thanks Steve.

"Legacy USB Support" in enabled.
I've tried two USB sticks in multiple ports. One a bootable stick with the W7 disk contents copied to it and the other an ISO version of same.

I have swapped over the DVD drive from an identical machine. The HDD is as is.

[steveG]

Sorry - misread your original post regarding the DVD swap.

Since its showing the DVD as a boot option now, have you tried booting a Win7 disk in it?

Steve

[WhiteD3]

All good now. The laptop's BIOS would only recognise and boot off a USB stick that was EUFI. In the end I borrowed an external DVD drive and installed W7. The internal DVD drive is still cactus but that's another adventure.

Cheers.

PS: I've always thought that people who did IT for a living must be nuts. I assumed they started out nuts but perhaps the trade sends them that way after a while. I know that things "IT" drive ME crazy!