Help me before I have a meltdown :(

Man of Honour
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Hey guys

I've owned Vista for a about a year and a half now, and anyone that knows me on these boards know I'm one of the first to defend it

I've never had a bluescreen or any crashes, any driver issues, nothing. It's been pure bliss, until now..

The other day I downloaded an SP1 ISO as I'm impatient and couldn't wait for the official release. Went to install it and it had obviously burnt the CD wrong as it couldn't access half the files. Had a mega disaster installing, crashes a load of services that its trying to update and just finally tells me the CD is borked basically.

Not liking a dodgy install like that, I decide to do a fresh install of Vista, it was about that time anyway. Except when I start installing, I get all sorts of errors, blue screens during the installation, dll errors. It literally took 17 attempts to get an install done

When I finally boot up, I get round to doing the normal routine, installing drivers. This is when I noticed something else, it kept giving errors when installing my X-Fi drivers, and wasn't actually installing the hardware. Another few reformats and that issue is sorted, but now, when I get as far as Windows Update, the 'Windows Module Installer' crashes everytime. If I install one update at a time it seems to be ok mostly but anything more and it just crashes and I have to restart. Never had this issue before even installing 50 updates at once

Again another few reformats and installing 50 updates one at a time, I get to the next bit, installing DirectX. Now the first few times I installed this it kept blue screening (so quickly I couldn't see what the error was) then restarting. Each time I tried installing it, it got one step further then blue screened until eventually I got it installed. This morning however (I reformatted again as something is not right with all these crashes) I went to install it and one of the services needing to install it just crashes everytime and it won't even start the installation

Finally, when installing Office it always gives an error about assembling a component, I've had it installed once but thats only after 5 attempts

What the hell is up with my machine, I've put everything at stock again so no overclocks. Each harddrive (one for the OS, one for the pagefile and one for everything else) has been wiped clean several times with full formats, partitions deleted etc. Did SP1 knacker my hard drives with that dodgy install. As before that I never had a single problem

And I'm getting to the point now where its really getting me down and I'm tempted to just sell up and use my MacBook

Please help :(
 
How old are the hard drives ? Does sound like dodgey sectors to me but I have no real experience Installing Vista so just my 10 cents & some Bumpage.
 
The one I am installing Vista on is less that a month old, so is the pagefile drive. The one for programs and games, which isn't even being used at this point (other than when I try installing Office) is about 8 months old. I'd be shocked if it was due to that, although I did think the dodgy install of SP1 could have done some serious damage to them

Cheers for the suggestion though mate and the free bumpage
 
the Dodgy install will have had no affect on the drives as all it is doing is shifting data around.

Remove your overclock and install, as I have found this to be the safest option when installing OS's as some dont like the extra speed/stress on the ram. if that dose not work then pull out some of your ram and see if it will install with less that 4gb.v
 
the Dodgy install will have had no affect on the drives as all it is doing is shifting data around.

Remove your overclock and install, as I have found this to be the safest option when installing OS's as some dont like the extra speed/stress on the ram. if that dose not work then pull out some of your ram and see if it will install with less that 4gb.v

Overclock has been removed, haven't tried the RAM yet but surely it wouldn't be a problem all of a sudden?

I've literally installed Vista previous to this about 10 times with no issues, it's only since the weekend that it's gone belly up

Will try it though :)
 
I really hope its not RAM issues

Will try memtest cheers

Any other ideas though just out of interest
 
Going from the post above,

Is there any software out there that can test a DVD drive? Like test how well its reading stuff off the disk and reliability?
 
btw

vista non sp1 doesn't like being installed with 4gb of ram inserted.. remove one stick and install, then do all the windows updates

put the stick back in, and do the new windows update that appears when you've got 4gb of ram in

i'd do a full format tbh
 
btw

vista non sp1 doesn't like being installed with 4gb of ram inserted.. remove one stick and install, then do all the windows updates

put the stick back in, and do the new windows update that appears when you've got 4gb of ram in

i'd do a full format tbh

Ah I didn't know that!

Thanks a lot! :D:D

I'm not questionning it but have you got any links about that?
 
Just an update for anyone who helped me

Tested the RAM with memtest, one stick produced 3432 errors within 5 seconds of starting. Removing that stick has got rid of the problem :)

Wierd how it just died, I was playing a game before I installed SP1 so it must have literally died within the 5 minutes of quitting the game
 
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