Hard drive/OS help....

[Sealy]

Please keep your answers as lay as possible for me, as I'm absolutely not a techy! Thank you!!

*I was running windows 7 on my lappie
*it kept crashing and freezing and I also heard my hard drive clicking
*I replaced the hard drive
*went to reinstall windows 7 can't install as the disks are just updates, not full installs
*So got my vista disk to install that so that I could have all the drivers et al so that I could then update with the windows 7 (I know big pain)
*Upon inserting the vista disk I get a box with "vistasetup, HDD CHECK ERROR!"
*When I click "OK" in the box, it goes to the recovery or to the install box, but won't do the install

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!
My lappie is an R500 LG That was running vista then upgraded to Windows 7

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Did you create a partition and format your drive before attempting to install?

 

[Sealy]

Did you create a partition and format your drive before attempting to install?

no I did not

 

[Sealy]

no I did not

ok, just reiterating that I am not a techie...how does one format a new hard drive?

 

[KGB]

Sealy, dat you?

The Windows install should recognize the lack of a partition and step you through the process of creating one and formatting it.

 

[msap14]

ok, just reiterating that I am not a techie...how does one format a new hard drive?

Formatting basically wipes the HDD clean, you can do this by inserting the vista disk. a screen will appear such as this (eventually):

there you can format the disks. Right now it sounds like you'll want to do a full format (so if given an option to do a quick format, don't do a quick format).

Then install vista then Win7.

Generally youd want to make just one partition.

select the drive and click format. then continue with the installation

 

[Intexity]

why doesn't windows 7 (speaking of the oem releases) not give the option to format? frustrating as hell...