I bought Vista Ultimate (comes with 32bit and 64bit versions) many
months ago, but I didn't want to install it right away because of all
the bugs I've heard about, and I didn't feel like backing up most of my
files.
System is:
ASUS M2N (just M2N)
AMD X2 4200+
OCZ Gold 2.0GB, DDR2-800 PC6400 RAM
eVGA nVIDIA 7600 GT (256mb, dual DVI)
Western Digital 80GB serial ata 3.0GB/s hard drive
~23 failed installs with multiple BSODs.
I get to the screen which says "Windows is preparing to start for the
first time. . . . . . . . . " consistently, then on the following screen
where it says "Completing installation", after about 2-3 minutes at
about 65-70% of the way through, I get a blue screen of death.
I tried instaling this from DVD several times on both 32bit and 64bit,
but that did not work well. I tried copying the files to the hard drive
and running the install from there, but that didn't work. I tried
updating my BIOS to the latest version, but that didn't work either. The
same happened when I completely formatted the hard drive (delete
paratition=>new=>format). I tried installing this on other hard drives,
but the same problem occurs.
Whiile the BSOD's are consistent, the error messages are NOT. I had
BSOD's complaining about my USB devices, so I unplugged those... one
time it complained about winload.exe missing or corrupted. Repair tool
does NOT work either. Everything else works fine (XP/Linux), but Vista
refuses to install.
This is annoying and I feel like I wasted my money on a ****ty
operating system.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!
--
rodent_rage