One of the projects that I wanted to accomplish with the DVR this summer was to install the fabled Windows 7 on it. I acquired an OEM copy from Newegg, and I proceeded to install. (Oddly, the full Windows 7 install media was cheaper than the upgrade from Vista media.) The install went fairly well, and then I discoverer that there was a new BIOS for the motherboard, so I decided to upgrade it too. Sadly, that was the wrong order to do it in.
The first problem after installing the F8 BIOS was that when I booted the machine, a message would appear on the screen only long enough for me to read about a quarter of it. And there didn't seem to be a way to halt the count down to reboot. The message seemed to say that my SATA drive was being accessed using a IDE emulation, and it asked if I wanted to use the native AHCI instead. (AHCI, stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface.) I figured, "Why not?", even though I didn't completely understand the question. (How could I? I didn't really get to thoroughly read the message.) But I told it Yes after an couple of failed attempts to read the entire message. (Note to self, use a camera next time!) The system looked like it was going to boot, and then rebooted itself, with Window reporting that it was unable to boot would I like to repair it. I told it to go ahead, but it couldn't find anything wrong. Finally, it put up a message saying that if I changed any hardware recently, to remove them. So, I booted to the BIOS and changed the hard drive support back to IDE and Windows rebooted properly this time.
I found some references to this problem on the web, and there were solution from some people who claimed that if a certain registry entry was changed from one value to another, it would enable the Microsoft AHCI support. I found this entry in the Windows 7 registry and was about to change it, when I found that the "from" value didn't match the entry in the Windows 7 registry in the forum message, so I was loath to change it. I decided that I didn't have that much time invested in the Windows 7 install and I would try it again with the proper setting in the BIOS. I will describe that process in a future blog, but during it, I discovered a couple of other presents that the BIOS update gave.
The first was that it re-enabled the floppy drive and made it the first boot device, with the hard drive the second and the CD-ROM the third. Someone on the web said that after they switched the BIOS into AHCI mode, the installation DVD-ROM could no longer be booted from the CD-ROM and they had to complete the install in IDE emulation mode and then try to switch the OS into AHCI mode later. I wonder if they just didn't realize that they needed to remove the floppy from the first boot position, and put the CD-ROM drive in its place.
The second problem was that the BIOS switched the on board VGA output to D-SUB/DVI. This didn't cause a problem for the installation, however later my machine had no sound, and when I tried to enable the HDMI Audio output, I was told that it wasn't connected. I even checked the HDMI cable to see if it had come loose. Nope, it was solid. I finally remembered that before I upgraded the BIOS, Windows 7 had audio, so I went back to the BIOS setup and found the Onboard VGA output connect set back into the default setting of D-SUB/DVI, and, of course, DVI has no audio component. So, the lesson to take away from this is to always refer back to Press Del for Setup after flashing the BIOS and put the BIOS back into its proper settings.
Next, I'll describe the process of installing Window 7.
No comments:
Post a Comment