Seven of Windows

Last weekend I started the installation of Windows 7. Here are the highpoints of that process. As usual, I'm going to go into as much detail as possible in hopes of helping others. (I also found it a good reference for myself later.) This is not the actual steps that I followed, as mistakes were removed to protect the innocent.

1. Begin with going to http://www.gigabyte.com/ and downloading the latest drivers for the motherboard. I clicked on Support & Downloads and entered MA78GM-US2H, my motherboard's part number, into the download search box and clicked the Search button. There are now two revisions of the board, and I was presented with a list of revisions from which to choose. I'm sure this information is somewhere on the motherboard, but that would require me to shutdown the machine and open the case. I tried using a few utilities to determine the revision using software, but without success. Finally, I uncovered the motherboard's original box and the revision was plainly printed there on a label. I have revision 1, so I clicked Drivers. I was presented with a list box of OS'S and I selected Windows 7 64-bit. I then downloaded the audio, Chipset/VGA, and LAN drivers into a new directory for easy access. For the SATA RAID, I only downloaded the AMD SATA AHCI driver, as I am not using a RAID. Then I changed the Download type listbox to BIOS, and downloaded the latest BIOS, which was F8. (I stayed away from the F9 beta.) Finally, change the Download type to Utility and the Choose your OS to Vista (no that is not a typo), and downloaded the @BIOS utility.


2. Next, go to http://www.ati.com/ and download the latest display drivers. In Download Drivers, from the Component Category listbox, choose Motherboard/Chipset. From the Product Line listbox, I chose Radeon 3xxx Series. From the Product Model listbox, I chose Radeon 3200 Series. From the Operating System listbox, I chose Windows 7 - 64 bit. Click the View Results button to see the latest drivers. Download the driver to the same directory as the Gigabyte drivers.


3. Next, in your download directory, unpack the motherboard_driver_ahci_amd_sb7xx_bootdisk_win7-64bit file. A directory named ahci_bootdisk_win7-x64 will be created. The first time I that I did this, the OS installed floppy drivers and attempted to format a floppy in a nonexistent floppy drive. If this happens, just cancel out of it. Copy the ahci_bootdisk_win7-x64 directory to a USB drive instead.
   
4. Next, either copy the remaining drivers to the USB drive, or place media into your DVD burner and back them up there. Also make a copy of any other interesting files in your download directory.


5. Next, I copied the C:\program files (x86)\SageTV directory to my backup media. I wanted it easily accessible when I reinstalled SageTV. Fortunately, all my recorded programs are in a different partition, so I didn't have to worry about excluding them from the copy.


6. Next, I used Acronis to backup both my OS and media partitions to a NAS, Network-attached Storage. It is a small box with a 1TB drive running Linux and Samba, which provides Windows networking support. Unfortunately, the wireless network, which has 54 MBit download speed, could not handle the high volume upload, and I had to move a router and the NAS into the room with the HTPC. I plugged both the HTPC and NAS into the router and perform the backup to the NAS.


7. Now is the time to upgrade the BIOS. Despite all the warnings about installing a BIOS while running Windows, I unpacked the motherboard_utility_gbtools_gbt_atbios file, and then installed the atBIOS program. I then unpacked the mb_bios_ga_ma78gm-us2h_f8 file. Finally, I ran the @BIOS utility and upgraded the BIOS from file. (It is still nerve racking to wait while it installs the BIOS.)


8. Say goodbye to Vista and shut it down.



We are almost ready to start the Windows 7 install. I was ready at this point with a wired USB keyboard to perform the install, but it turned out that the wireless Gyration keyboard would work.




9. Push the power button and be ready to press the Del key to to enter BIOS setup. You'll probably be greeted with a (too) brief message about your SATA drive being used in IDE emulation mode, and asking if you want to switch to AHCI mode. Ignore this message and press the Del key.


10. Select Standard CMOS Features.


11. Make sure Drive A is set to None and Floppy 3 Mode Support is Disabled.


12. Select Advanced BIOS Features.


13. Set Onboard VGA output connect to D-SUB/HDMI. Set First Boot Device to CDROM. Set Second Boot Device to Hard Disk.


14. Select Integrated Peripheral.


15. Set OnChip SATA Type to AHCI.



Make any other changes that you feel comfortable with. These are all the changes that I remember making.



16. Place the Windows 7 DVD into the optical drive, save the BIOS changes and tell BIOS boot the DVD.


17. When the language page, pick the appropriate values and click the Next button. (It is very cool that the Air Mouse works here.)


18. When you reach Which type of installation do you want?, click Custom (advanced).


19. At Where do you want to install Windows?, select Drive options (advanced). Click Disk 0 Partition 1. This should have a Type of System. Click Delete. Click New to create the new OS partition. Select the new partition and click Format.


20. Insert the USB drive in the machine and click Load Driver.


21. Press the Browse button and navigate to the directory containing the AHCI driver. Press OK and then Next.



Seems like the rest of the installation was straight-forward, so I'm going skip ahead to more interesting stuff.



22. During installation, if you are asked to select a wireless network, skip it unless you have the security key handy.


23. As soon as Windows 7 finishes installing itself, open the Control Panel, click on Network and Internet and finish setting up the networking, if necessary. I had to turn off the router connected to the NAS to be able to connect to the Internet through the wireless connection.


24. Return to the Control Panel and select System and Security. Click on Windows Update and apply all of the latest updates.


25. Install the media containing your driver downloads and copy them to the Downloads directory.


26. Unpack and install motherboard_driver_audio_realtek_azalia-ati.


27. Unpack and install motherboard_driver_chipset_amd_7series_v2.0_win7_64.


28. Unpack and install motherboard_driver_lan_realtek_811_w7.


29. Next, run 10-7_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_enu. This will create a C:\ATI\Support\10-7_vista_win7_66_dd_ccc_enu directory. I think it automatically starts the install. If not, run the setup program to install the latest ATI drivers. (motherboard_driver_chipset_amd_7series_v2.0_win7_64 will have already installed some of them, this will install the latest.)


30. Finally, if you did not map a drive letter to the partition containing your SageTV programs, return to the Control Panel and select System and Security and then, under Administrative Tools, select Create and format hard disk partitions. You will see that that Windows 7 has already assigned a drive to your programs partition. Right click on it and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.... Select on the drive letter and then click Remove. Right click (again) on your media partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.... In the dialog box, select the Mount in the following empty NTFS folder radio button and the click Browse. Use the New Folder button to create an empty folder for the partition. (I created C:\Volumes\Media.) Select the empty folder and press OK and then OK. (If you wish at this point you may reletter your DVD drive.)

We are now ready to install SageTV, but I'll leave that for another post, as this one is massive enough.