Fun with Windows 7...

So everyone I've talked to has said that Windows 7 is really easy to install. And in my previous experiences with it, it was - I've installed the beta and the RTM on several real and virtual machines without a problem.

Until now.

Last year, I decided to build a Hackintosh - a PC hacked to run MacOS -as my main machine. I bought the recommended motherboard - an Asus P5W DH Deluxe - off of eBay, and assembled the rest of the parts from stuff I had lying around that I got free or cheap after rebate, plus a couple new parts from Newegg (processor, hard drive, ect). The first motherboard I bought didn't work, and by the time I found a replacement, I'd kind of lost interest - Apple came out with a Mac Mini that had dual monitor support, which was my main reason for building the hackintosh in the first place, and i began to question the wisdom of running a pirated, hacked OS on my main production machine.

So the Hackintosh sat at a friend's house for a while. A few weeks ago, I got a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate from a Microsoft event. I figured I'd grab the Hackintosh, throw 7 on it, and hook it up to my 42" LCD TV to stream music and movies to from my NAS. So yesterday I grabbed the machine, hooked it up, and threw in the Win7 DVD.

It booted up, started loading Windows, and then went to a blue screen with a stop screen and hex. Googled it, and found out it was an ACPI BIOS error. Went into BIOS, turned on ACPI 2.0 support, and it went past the error... only to stall on a "starting windows" screen.

Did a little googling, and found that this error was pretty common on Asus mobos. Tried a bunch of the suggestions - disabling the second NIC in BIOS, disabling USB ports, ect. Finally tonight I took out two of the 4 sticks of RAM and unplugged the USB card reader. It loaded fine, and after it was loaded I powered down and put the RAM and card reader back in and it still boots.

I've still got to finish loading some more software before it's ready for the TV. But the next time somone tells me how easy 7 is to install, I have a story for them....