Win7 Beta on T61p - great, but no DVD drives

[thedogwarrior]

I've got a T61p, T7300 2GHz, 4GB RAM, which was running WinVista Ultimate 64-bit. I downloaded the Win7 Beta 64-bit, and burned to DVD.

I've tried both a clean install, via an external DVD drive (the Memorex noted below) to a spare HD in the ultrabay adapter. Win7 ran great, very fast, except that the external Memorex DVD burner was no longer recognized. It appeared in the Device Manager, with message:

Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)

Doing a right click on the drive/Update Driver, and search online, message says Windows has determined the driver software for your device is up to date.

I then did an upgrade (I've got good backups I can reload fairly quickly) over my existing WinVista Ultimate 64-bit installation, on the main system HD. I installed this via the internal DVD burner, noted below. Again, install came off with no problems, took a good 2.5 hours to complete, but at the end, Win7 is again running well, still pretty snappy, haven't come across any apps that don't run - but I have no external Memorex DVD drive, or internal DVD burner.

I've let Win7 search for updated drivers, with the same results as above - Windows says drivers are fine. Exploring PC, shows no drive letters assigned to either drive. I've removed the internal DVD, and plugged it back in. Windows "finds" it - but again, no drive letter.

I've read a number of other posts here (and other sites as well) of Win7 beta installs going well, but no mention of the problems I'm having. I've let System Update run a few times, as well as Windows Update, still no dice.

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'd be glad to provide more details, if needed.

Devices as listed in DevMan are:

[thedogwarrior]

Think I've got this one solved. Found mention of UpperFilters registry values being corrupted, and followed the guidelines in this MSKB article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 9461/en-us - and all is well now.

[EvilH]

2.5 hours to install? I've yet to have Win7 take more than an hour and that was on my m1400 with a 1.1ghz ULV Pentium M. Though that install was off a compact flash card in the pcmcia slot.

[Temetka]

I find that interesting.

Would you mind providing some details on how you accomplished that?

[EvilH]

Accomplished what? 1 hour install on a rather unimpressive and non recommended processor or installing from compact flash? I should mention it was an upgrade of XP Tablet as prior attempts to do a clean install off compact flash or an external hard drive failed at the last step for some reason. And judging from how long it took to get to that point and how long the last steps would have taken from other installs it would have finished around 1 hour. Should also point out it has a new 5400 rpm drive and 2gb of ram so that probably helped a lot.

[Temetka]

I was interested in how you were able to make the CF card bootable and install from it.

This could come in handy for me as I have some smaller laptops with no optical drive.

That and it seems like a fun way to install.

RE: 1 hour install for your machine. Given the specs of the machine, that's not too shabby of an install time and given the speed of the HD and CF slots also.

[EvilH]

I followed the tips in a post similar to this one: http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns! ... 1665.entry. It popped up in my RSS Reader so I gave it a shot. This particular one was written for USB flash devices but it should apply to compact flash or an external hard disk. All depends on if the computer supports booting from USB or PCMCIA. Also seen people use some funky cables and IDE to Compact Flash Adapters to plug a hard disk and a compact flash in and then install that way.

[Temetka]

Thanks!