TravelMate 8573T freezes when trying to install OS.

In an effort to upgrade from windows 7 to Windows 10, I went to buy one of Microsofts USB flash drives with a Windows 10 installer and a product key. I inserted the flash drive, booted to it, and started the setup. It asked my language, keyboard, preferred architecture and product key. Everything fine, until the point were it should start the install. The screen froze at the step "Copying Windows files (0%)", and I was unable to move my mouse. I left it for over an hour and a half, but nothing had changed. I have by now tried to install:

Windows 10 Pro (64 bit) from a Microsoft flash drive
Windows 10 Pro (32 bit) from a Microsoft flash drive
Windows 10 Home (64 bit) from a Microsoft flash drive
Windows 10 Home (32 bit) from a Microsoft flash drive
Windows 10 Pro (64 bit) from a self made flash drive installer
Windows 10 Pro (32 bit) from a self made flash drive installer
Windows 10 Home (64 bit) from a self made flash drive installer
Windows 8.1 (64 bit) from a self made flash drive installer
Ubuntu 20.4 LTS from a self made flash drive installer

I've even tried to put in 8 Gb of RAM (in stead of 4), but still all the Windows installers get stuck at the same point, and the Ubuntu installer get's stuck at a loading icon, right after scanning my hard drive.
I have an Acer TravelMate 8573T with an Intel Core i5 2430M, WDC 256 HHD, 4Gb of RAM and a BIOS in version 1.13. I have a graphics card (128Mb) as well, but since I can't gt an OS installed, I wouldn't know how to find out which graphics card that is (can't find it in the BIOS).

Does anyone have any idea on how to fix this? All ideas are welcome!!
Thanks in advance!

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billsey

So you can get things started, which means booting from the USB works. You are past the first couple of steps when it starts to copy files. It fails at 0% which sounds like the failure is timed with the first file to be copied, which points to something with the filesystem or permissions on the existing C: drive. Have you got a current backup of your W7 system? If so we can possibly get a bigger hammer and just do a clean W10 install instead of doing the upgrade install. If that doesn't sound like it's the best choice then we need to start looking at the C: drive under W7. Maybe a chkdsk with full sector scan would help, assuming the reason you're not allowed to write is a corrupted filesystem.

jeremypsl

I have the exact same problem !
Still no solution for me.

billsey

Yeah, we never heard back so don't know if any suggestions were even tried.

jeremypsl

I tried with different ram stick and different hdd or ssd, same problem, 0% and mouse freeze with 64b installation. No problem with 32b.

billsey

I believe the original poster likely had an issue with their drive and the first attempt to write was failing. With yours it's not likely to be that because it's working with the 32bit installation. How did you create your install image on the flash drive? Is it trying to install using GPT/UEFI or MBR/Legacy? Which W10 version are you trying with, 2004 or an earlier one?

jeremypsl

Well i tried with official microsoft tool and unofficial rufus tool. Don’t know the GPT/UEFI or MBR/Legacy options... everything is by default.

chappe67

I got stuck, nothing worked. I just kept trying and trying, and after two weeks it all of a sudden did it for me, but I guess that's not very helpful for you is it... When it worked I was using Rufus, but instead o the build in windows feature I made Rufus "install" an official copy downloaded from the microsoft tool. But then again, that method had already failed on me lots of times before it worked, so yeah...

billsey

So, using the official ISO from Microsoft use Rufus and make sure it's set to MBR before writing to the flash drive. The default will be GPT.

jeremypsl

MBR worked ! Thanks a lot ! 🙏

billsey

Good to hear!

Foxyz

I was having the same issues! Basically for everyone else that runs into this, this computer does not yet support UEFI because it is too old, and thus it can't read GPT partitioned drives. I tried everything from flash drives, Windows 8, 7, 10, nothing worked and it always gave me errors. I really didn't want to try using Hyper-V but I eventually decided to go with it. In Hyper-V you need to configure a gen 1 machine, then connect the drive you want to install to to the virtual machine, and choose the iso as boot by mounting it and pressing a key when booting the virtual machine, then you can regularly install and put the hard drive back in the travelmate. I guess when the laptop was new there would be a proper dvd with windows 7 on it partitioned MBR and all the drivers. You have to make sure the drive is MBR, you can do shift + F10 to open cmd and in diskpart convert to MBR. Windows will only install itself as MBR when the setup is booted from MBR and is run in Legacy BIOS mode. This is why it's necessary to use a gen 1 Hyper-V for the setup. Very tedious process, took me 8 hours and dropped the hard drive twice trying to figure it out with no helpful information online other than on this post but absolutely worth the time and effort. It was very clear the setup would freeze every time it tried to write to the HDD while it was GPT formatted which confirmed that I was looking in the right direction. Hope someone finds this helpful.

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