I bought a HP dv7t quad-core edition laptop last week with Windows 7 Home Premium. I own a licensed copy of Windows 7 Ultimate and wanted to do a fresh install since I did not want to pay HP to do the same thing. Plus I hate all the bloatware that comes with new laptops.
The laptop has the following drive configuration:
- 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD (disk 0)
- 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD (disk 1)
- 32 GB mSSD Hardware Acceleration Cache
I should have posted my question before messing around on my own too much. After several botched attempts to circumvent either Microsoft or HP's restrictions, I now have two completely wiped out 750 GB HDDs, formatted as NTFS using Linux's gParted tool. The only way I noticed the actual 32 GB mSSD was when I used a Linux fdisk tool. Otherwise, that disk (or partition?) is not even visible.
Now, whenever I boot with the system with a Windows 7 Ultimate set up disk, the screen displays only disk 0. I can delete the single partition and create one or more partitions, but whatever I do, I am unable to proceed from the partition set up screen of Windows 7 setup. The error that I get is setup was unable to create a new system partition.
How do I proceed?
Edit: Here is a timeline of the steps I followed, which seems to have put me in bad shape:
- Attempted to install Windows 7 Ultimate using the setup DVD. That did not work at all. Setup persistently prompted me to choose the second HDD, as a dual-install perhaps.
- Then, I decided to remove all partitions off all the drives using a Linux tool (gParted). I removed the partitions, created one partition in the first and second HDD. I marked the first partition on the first disk as bootable. I formatted all disk parititions as NTFS. When I rebooted with Windows 7 setup DVD, it showed me only the first HDD and even when I tried to proceed with setup, it gave me the error - Couldn't find boot disk on this BIOS based computer.
- This step I probably regret the most (since I should not have done what I don't understand), but I went back into gParted and created a MS DOS partition table on the mSSD drive (/dev/sdb). When I rebooted the system, instead of taking me to the BIOS or trying to boot off the first HDD, I see only a screen that has something to do with RAID configuration. What is really odd is that I cannot even enter the BIOS anymore. After a second of flickering, the RAID/volume configuration screen persists.
I have attached some screen shots that hopefully describe the current state in better detail. BTW, I don't need RAID. I want to set up Windows 7 Ultimate in the first HDD and keep the second HDD for data/storage alone. The 32 GB mSSD is supposed to help with caching, so I would like to make that usable again too.
System Information: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ws0yWyg96JZmllejFaMUlhT1E
BIOS Welcome Screen: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ws0yWyg96JZUVaY3VKWldDWEk
RAID Config Screen: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ws0yWyg96JZEE1Yl9IQ3R5UVU
RAID Summary: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ws0yWyg96JMEZmYUpjcUxJeTQ
Reset RAID Disks: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ws0yWyg96JVHh3RWRJSEticlU
HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC
, Product#:A5F92AV
I don't believe the system is using RAID, because both disks showed up with different names when I received the laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. I wiped both disks clean (slow format) using Linux utilities, so I am starting from scratch.