Windows 7 x86 upgrade hangs on FIRST BOOT with spinning icon

An old AMD Duron cpu with NForce 215 chipset wouldn't have been seen until 2001 when the chipset first arrived. Comparison of Nvidia nForce chipsets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The AMD Duron cpu line only came out during June 2000. Duron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I doubt that was the board that saw 95 running in the mid 90s! If the system originally saw 95 he likely swapped boards out when XP first arrived as part of the need for hardware as well as the OS upgrade. As for the old drive if original and not one bought afterwards that would be about 20yrs. old and not a good option at this time! He must have used a 40pin to 80pin ide adapter to get around the need for those old ide ribbon cables in order to continue using the drive back then.

WD brought in the EIDE(Enhanced IDE) or ATA-2 back in 1994 about that time while the Ultra IDE would be needed presently for the standard 80pin data cable. If you can post back with the make and other information seen on the drive labeling excluding serial number that can be looked up fast to find out just what drive that is you have there. For some general information on drives that can be looked over at Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another thing you will want to provide a good break down for the actual hardwares in use is the free SIW(System Info for Windows) tool found at SIW | System Information for Windows by Gabriel Topala That provides a full breakdown of everything including the programs you have as well as the details for cpu, memory, video card even, and the mother board itself for a look at the specs.

Just remember that any hardwares that don't even see Windows 8.1 updates won't be much good for 10! That includes the main board itself where the ide as well as other onboard controllers are located. That would be the main reason for seeing 10 fail besides a problem drive.

The 1155 being the socket series but not the model board itself. ASRock > Motherboard Series That will show what support the board itself presently is seeing.

As for simply manually knocking out drivers by way of the registry that won't do much when going from one version of Windows to one newer. Initially for the July 29th release last summer intending on still running 7 on the former host/boot the second OS drive that didn't end up with 8 or 8.1 was left empty for the most part other then an occasional look at some newer release of a Linux distro until seeing a clone of the 7 drive initially thought to be why the upgrade to 10 wouldn't take place. That was followed by a fresh install of 7 which once finding the extra drives present had to be unplugged first then saw the first upgrade which came out buggy! Since the activation servers were bogged down heavy a second upgrade to repair the first took place until the following weekend saw the clean install go on and activate upon arrival at the desktop for the first time.

You will note that despite having seen a split for the 100gb off the 1tb second OS drive for Linux the drive still had remained free of the clutter and like volume information problem you could be seeing there as to why the drive wasn't made bootable from the start. With the mention of using a 2.5" drive not a 3.5" drive the next question of course is that in a 5.25" drive bay adapter installed internally or in an external usb type enclosure?

For a Windows install to work if not simply seeing a clone or image restored from a drive already in working order a custom install to any hard drive in an enclosure will often fail. The Windows installer uses generic controller drivers as well as 10 now automatically downloading and installing updates from the manufacturer or from an MS archive upon detection of the hardwares during the set up. If internal then you may have to have the 10 installer not go for anything until the installation completes since it may be putting on the wrong update or if the drive is external you have to look at the usb factor despite set up files having been unpacked to the drive.

Some have run into problems simply from allowing 10 to download and install updates which is the most likely reason you are seeing 10 hang up on you there. Just remember that unlike previous versions like XP, Vista, 7, even for 8 and 8.1 the 10 installer is it's own animal at this time and tends to work a little bit differently.

Back when first building the main and later 3yrs. later needing a fresh copy of 7 again I could simply leave the pair of 1tb then storage drives left plugged in while seeing the second OS drive's data cable pulled. With 10 however those other drives saw a problem! The 10 installer got confused on where to put things. In your situation however something like the wrong download is where to start looking.

From the information there the idea of an upgrade rather then seeing a full fresh clean install may be the problem you are running into. Besides the clutter factor in the registry which comes over time and any particular driver which is less likely as 10 will download fresh drivers as part of an upgrade install the volume on the drive may be seeing errors.

You may want to consider seeing a full system image backup made of the drive before hand of what it sees presently in preparation for a full wipe. That would involve seeing a brand new single primary created to start 10 off 100% fresh. You would then let 10 go on without all the drivers at first to get the basic Windows install running before download and install of the latest updates from the support sites for board and expansion cards.

That will entail installing all programs from scratch onto the newer version that sees a fresh install. This will automatically eliminate the 3rd party or driver incompatibility type issues entirely. In order to preserve the programs you have on considering a dual boot by adding a second drive might be a working solution for you as the present drive would remain untouched while 10 goes onto the next drive instead. Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums

I made the setup as simple as possible, connecting the storage device directly to a motherboard SATA port. As for installation media, the same problem occurs whether the install is carried out from a USB flash drive, a DVD, or Windows Update.

Despite being plugged directly into the board while being external is the internal drive(s) still plugged in at all other then optical or a card reader? Already sounds like you are trying to work with a second drive externally but should remember what I was saying before about the problems of having multiple especially any non OS drives plugged in when trying to get 10 to go on. The 10 installer might even be getting confused by the enclosure not drive being what it detects instead. Enclosures will appear as separate devices.

If the flash drive isn't the 10 media being used for the upgrade that would be an item to see unplugged as that can also appear as a logical drive to the 10 installer. The dvd drive with or without any media of any type present is simply ignored by the Windows installer unless being the media in use there. I have to suspect the flash drive as the likely culprit however unless the main drive has a problem?

What will happen during the upgrade attempts made so far while the flash drive not in use but still present is where to look to see if any temp files were placed there that should have been placed on C! That is what will stall an upgrade install as well as any clean install when the 10 installer gets confused as to where to unpack things.

Fat 16 was originally seen for the DOS/Windows 3.1, 3.11 days and carried over until Fat 32 was brought in with ME. NT, 2000, XP and all else since are native to NTFS while XP could be installed onto Fat volumes due to it's backwards support with Legacy.

For 10 a direct uprgrade at this time would now be pointless in contrast to putting a full fresh clean install on a fresh NTFS primary. The supported upgrade path from XP would have to be that since not even Vista can see a direct upgrade to 10. 7, 8, 8.1 are the versions supported. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...ll.html?filter