T400 - Wont boot from Windows 7 upgrade disk

I am trying to clean install Windows 7 on my T400. I insert the disk into the dvd drive and the computer boots right into Vista. I have triple checked the Bios and it indicates that the DVD drive is the 1st boot. The drive spins up initially upon restart, but then the computer goes into Vista.

I have 2 different Win 7 disks which I have tried. Both are original Microsoft. One disk is a store purchased Win7 Professional 64 bit. The other is a Win 7 Professional volume licensing product.

The store purchased disk was used to clean install on a different computer and it worked ok to boot from.

What am I doing wrong? I would like to clean install and it seems booting from the disk is the way to go. Very frustrating. I am hoping I am overlooking some simple thing.

Please HELP . . . . TIA

 

Does the disc show up in Windows Explorer and did you try hitting F12?

 

The disk shows up in Explorer. What is F12 for, and when do I hit it?

 

F12 brings up the boot devices. You hit it when the ThinkPad logo comes up.

 

OK just tried F12. It brings up that the first boot device is DVD drive. The DVD drive spins up, but then it just boots into Vista as usual. It seems as though the computer doesnt see the disk as a bootable disk. Is that possible with the upgrade disk? I thought you could boot from the upgrade disk. I booted from an upgrade disk on my desktop. That said, my desktop went from XP to Win 7, while my T400 is going from Vista to Win 7. Could that be the difference? Everything I have read on the net indicates the upgrade disks are bootable and should be recognized, so long as the boot order is set up for dvd as priority.

 

You could use a Linux Live CD to see if your drive can boot from a disc. I have a Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade disc. I've had no trouble booting with it. If that doesn't yield anything, I'd say it's time to call support.

 

I have attached a picture of the disk type I was using for the install. For some reason the computer simply wouldnt boot from it. I went into the bios and removed the C drive from the boot sequence so as to FORCE the computer to boot from the DVD drive. The computer inidcated there was no OS. I tried that same thing with my store purchased 64 bit disk and it was able to boot from that disk. I am currently installing using the store bought disk with the plan being to use the key from the disk pictured. The pictured disk is a volume licensed disk. I compared the files on the store bought upgrade disk to that on the volume license disk. The first level of folders were identical. The overall size of the disks were volume licensed - 2.9GB and the upgrade disk was 3.0GB. The size difference was in the "SOURCES" folder. A quick glance showed that the upgrade disk had professional, home and ultimate within the Sources folder, whereas the volume licensed disk only had professional.

Anyhow, I still cant figure out why the volume licensed disk wouldnt boot. Maybe I simply received a bad disk? I hope there is nothing special about the volume license disk and its key that it will not allow me to install with the retail upgrade disk.

 

Well, I think I figured out the problem. It seems from reading some other forums on the net that the volume licensing disk is NOT bootable. Apparently of all the upgrade disks for win 7, the volume licensing upgrade disks are the only ones which are not bootable. I landed up installing with the regular upgrade disk I had and then it was able to take the volume license key code. Hopefully this will save someone some heartache in the future.