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I switched out the HDD in my laptop for a brand new Kingston M500 240gb SSD. I expected to be able to just stick in my Windows 7 pen drive and install to the SSD. When booting from the pen drive I'm presented with a menu offering me the ability to install Windows 7, along with a live boot off the pen drive and 32 and 64 bit recovery options. When I select the install option I am immediately presented with:

The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible

Here's what I've tried:

  • Switching back to the HDD to make sure everything else is working
  • Booting into the live environment and running various combinations of DISKPART and BOOTREC commands - sorry, I didn't document everything I tried.

In the live boot I can see the SSD fine and it appears to be working. I've been able to move files around on it and manage its partitions and everything fine.

None of these seem to have done anything. The repair option on the pen drive fails to run giving a fairly generic error.

Am I right in thinking that this isn't entirely my fault and that it should have just worked out of the bag? Am I just being an idiot here? What now?

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  • Is the SSD visible in the BIOS? (If not the SATA- or the power-connector might not have been fully connected when you tried it the first time).
    – Hennes
    Oct 26, 2014 at 12:21
  • Yes @Hennes, the SSD is visible in the BIOS and I have tried varying the boot order, not that that should make a difference I don't think. Oct 26, 2014 at 12:37

1 Answer 1

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Ensure SATA mode in Bios is set to AHCI (you may have to dig around - Onboard devices is a good start)

Obtain the SATA drivers for your system, place them on a USB stick and install them when the option appears on the screen below.

Windows 7 setup SATA drivers

The drive should appear once the correct drivers have been installed.

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  • SATA drivers are built into Windows Vista and later. They are no longer required.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 26, 2014 at 13:47
  • Incorrect. I have had many a newer SATA driver & RAID driver needing installation via this method. Oct 26, 2014 at 15:18
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    True. The most common drivers are included, but in exotic cases (e.g. RAID, server chipsets) or with newer devices than the OS disc will need drivers.
    – Hennes
    Oct 26, 2014 at 17:00

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