Windows 7 installation no drivers were found

To cut a long story short, I purchased an ex windows 7 key from a retired PC and downloaded an ISO to match the corresponding Operating System. I burned the image to disc then entered the bios of the PC awaiting the installation. I set one of my CD/DVD drives as the first bootable device and put the disc in it.

Then when starting to boot the computer I got the expected ‘press any key to boot from disk’. The first Windows 7 screen loaded fine and I selected my Country. The second Windows 7 screen loaded fine and I got the ‘Install Now’ option, which I clicked.

After a fairly long wait I got a no drivers found error message and could not continue with the Windows 7 Pro Installation. I seacrhed briefly on Google but the common cause was claimed to be a faulty download or disk (Not True Though!).

I pondered what else it could be as I have installed Windows 7 Home edition on it many times before. So I thought about any hardware changes that I had made since my last installation. For me it was a sound card. I removed it, tried again but failed.

I tried swapping bootbale CD drives (as I have two on this particular PC) but failed again.

I then noticed the initial error message mentioned a CD/DVD drive driver error. So I removed each, the first failed and I was about to give up but then removed the initial drive and reconnected the other.

Worked at once. So for me it was a faulty CD/DVD drive.

Just take careful note on the intial driver fail (before clicking) as it will probably show exactly what piece of hardware is at fault.