[URGENT] Win7 32 Bit Disc Not Being Read

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's a long shot, but here goes. I have a co-worker who has Vista on a Dell Inspiron desktop which, to be frank, fucked up recently and has been giving her grief. A lot. It won't run The Sims 3 or iTunes properly now, when it used to quite well. I have reformatted the HDD and gone back to the factory install of Vista as she bought a copy of Win7 Home Premium to replace Vista (originally she tried the AnyTime upgrade via the Internet, but it borked itself and didn't work).

Now, the issue I find is that I tried the 32-bit disc and it wouldn't read. Okay. 64-bit disc does read. Her DVD games do, as does a rather cheesy pop CD collection. So the drive is functional, which ruled out my first suggestion of having that looked at. So maybe it was the disc? Except, it's not. PC World tried it today and it worked on their desktop. So the disc checks out. What's more, because it's opened software, that bullshit EULA deal means she can't take the software back.

So, does any one have any idea what is going on here? Is there something inherent within Vista that is not working with the 32-bit copy of Win7? Her processor is 32-bit, so that disc is the only one she can use.

All help appreciated, preferably within four hours...

[charlemagne]

Did you try copying the disc on another computer or just getting a copy of Win 7 32bit from somewhere else? The key is the important thing, not the disc.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Did you try copying the disc on another computer or just getting a copy of Win 7 32bit from somewhere else? The key is the important thing, not the disc.

I've not been able to copy the disc myself, as she lives the best part of an hour away and I didn't have my laptop. If the disc reads on other PCs, are you suggesting ripping the contents as an ISO and trying on another disc? I don't think it'll work, since the disc drive is physically intact and reads, but just not the one disc required for the install. The 64-bit copy in the same box appeared as being read, though.

[Dominus Atheos]

Follow these instructions on another computer to copy the installation files from the disk to a USB drive and install Win7 from that.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sounds like that's going to have to be it. Now I've got it confirmed it's not the disc, I'll let her know to give it me, I'll copy the files to my flash drive, then install off that. I did think it'd be a bad DVD, guess not.

Appreciated.