Win7 and Win8 media

[P5-133XL]

Somehow all my Win8 and Win7 media has gone missing. I have no idea where they disappeared to or who took them.

Anyone have links to ISO's for x32 and x64, OEM and Retail, of the different flavors (Pro, basic, home, business, ultimate, etc.) and service packs that I can DL? I don't need keys (They were not stored with the DVD's) -- just media.

 

[Stereodude]

You could try here.

 

[P5-133XL]

Thanks, that's useful.

 

[Clocker]

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-81-tip-download-windows-81-iso-windows-8-product-key

 

[P5-133XL]

So far, its all been a big pain. All the Win7 links tried have been upgrade only ISO's. I have to install XP/Vista just so I can install Win7 then run the Win 8 upgrade and then run 8.1 upgrade.

 

[Clocker]

So far, its all been a big pain. All the Win7 links tried have been upgrade only ISO's. I have to install XP/Vista just so I can install Win7 then run the Win 8 upgrade and then run 8.1 upgrade.

I used a Win8 product key to download a Win8 and install it w/o any problem.

 

[Mercutio]

I can't believe it's that much of a PITA to get decent .ISO files. Let me see what I can do for you.

 

[P5-133XL]

I used a Win8 product key to download a Win8 and install it w/o any problem.

That only works if you have a working OS to start. I'm working with a blank HD. Upgrades won't install.

 

[Howell]

They wont install or you have issues after the install? I resolved the second issue for myself but not the first.

 

[Stereodude]

That only works if you have a working OS to start. I'm working with a blank HD. Upgrades won't install.

That hasn't happened for me. I've clean installed with upgrade media more than once without any issue. Activation worked too. One of the times I had to change a regkey first though.

 

[pfrcom]

All the Win7 links tried have been upgrade only ISO's

I've successfully done clean Win7 installs using DVDs burnt from X17-59183.iso having MD5 0bff99c8310ba12a9136e3d23606f3d4, and X17-59186.iso having MD5 ed15956fe33c13642a6d2cb2c7aa9749

Perhaps they've changed what's at those Digital River links ?

 

[P5-133XL]

In this process, I discovered something I hadn't run into before. Do not try to install Windows on a machine that has a micro-thumb drive plugged in.

 

[mubs]

What happens?

 

[P5-133XL]

You'll get to the create partition section; If there is no partition, and you continue it will say it can't create a partition or find a valid partition and die. If you create a partition and format it then continue, it will do so and then die saying it can not find or create a partition on the HD. You'll then manually try to partition and format and it will all work but the Windows install will still claim not to be able to create a partition or find a valid partition.

What it won't do is tell you anything about having a flash drive in a USB port. So what you will do is get another HD, thinking that the HD is bad. Then you try different media thinking that the media is bad. Then you start diagnosing what is dead (HD, PS, RAM, MB, ...) but everything seems to work perfectly independently and on other machines.

You spend lots of time till you notice the thumb drive in a USB port. Remove it and see that installing Windows works fine now. Lots and lots of time wasted. Somewhere in there I should have tried Linux, rather than Windows, but that didn't occur to me till after.

 

[Howell]

Odd. I have ONLY installed Windows 8 from a properly prepared thumb drive. My computers don't have CD/DVD drives.

 

[Mercutio]

I've installed everything from XPSP3 to 8.1 from a thumb drive without issue. I will note, however, that not every thumb drive can be made bootable and not all of them play nice with hard drive emulation settings in a BIOS/UEFI.

What I thought P5 would say is that his drive letters got screwed up by having a thumb drive installed, which is something I've run in to from installing while having extra flash drives and/or card readers connected during Windows installations; I've accidentally made computers where the first actual hard disk is assigned drive letter G: because I left a USB card reader and a printer and as stupid as that is, I'm not going to leave a computer configured in that way.

 

[P5-133XL]

I am not normally one that gets frustrated installing an OS. I've done lots of installs. This was an exception. It just means that no matter how many times you've done something, something new will crop-up.

I did not install from a thumb drive. I installed from a DVD created from the above ISO's but a working non-bootable thumb drive was plugged in and I didn't know it. There was no indication from Windows install that a thumb drive existed (drive letter or otherwise) even from the console utilities that I used to partition and format the one HD. It is quite likely, that the Windows install was trying to install itself onto the 16GB thumb drive rather than the HD which is why it would fail repeatedly.

The MB was a Ga-X48-DS4 with a q6600 with a single 1.5 TB Seagate SATA drive (Also tried a 2.0TB Samsung drive) both with standard 512b sectors, One SATA DVD drive, one 16GB thumb drive). No UEFI bios. I tried various AHCI/IDE settings in the bios but that didn't seem to matter. The only time it actually worked was after I removed the thumb drive and then everything worked perfectly the first time. I tried installing with various W7 and W8 DVD install media burned from ISO's on a different machine and that didn't matter either.

It was just a time wasting experience of total frustration and annoyance. If installing from a DVD with a working thumb drive works on other machines then I can only attribute my problems to this particular machines BIOS. At this point my lesson learned is to check for a thumb drive, on a used machine, before installing.

 

[Howell]

Thanks for the update.

 

[mubs]

Thanks P5. What a dick of an installer!

I'll wager you're not the first one to run into this. MS doesn't do basic checks, looks like.

 

[sedrosken]

I use the Universal USB installer to make my flash drives bootable. Never had an issue. Well, I had an issue on my laptop when I had my wireless mouse plugged in but that got fixed in relatively short order.

I know you can put XP SP3 setup on a flash drive, but how would one go about that?

 

[Mercutio]

XP SP3 can be packaged using the same container that newer versions of Windows use, a .WIM file. The Windows Automated Install Toolkit can make one for XP SP3.