Black Screen of Death

Ok I've been a PC Tech now for 4 years, run my own bussiness, and this one is something I can't figure out. I managed to finally get Vista installed after making an external hard drive into a vista install medium, so it installed, got through all the stuff took about oh 40 minutes. First login after setup is done, bam Black Screen of death. Ran memtestx86 for 4 loops, no errors, ran seatools to test the hard drive no errors. Hardware checks out, its a Windows vista Masterdisk with both 32 and 64bit Windows on it, and has worked for 100's of installs before it.

It's an Acer laptop, Core Duo 1gb of ram, client laptop, and for the life of me this isnt making sense, freash clean load of Vista, hard drive wiped, same issue we where having before the drive was wiped, and i've looked it was definatly wiped, this eludes, me so any advice yall might have, id really appreciate it, I told my customer it would be done by monday morning, and since I work from a home bussiness, my word is my life line for more clients.

Welcome
If the problem exists even after a reinstall it points to hardware.
You may want to use this list a as a guide, giving attention to the hardware causes
Roundup of Vista’s Black Screen of Death – Solutions | Burchwords

The last solution, even, in this write up is to reinstall and not many (if any hardware causes)
Did you test the memory? Although memory is not given as a direct cause, in many situations, replacing ram is. Your situation seems unique, however. Here is the memory test.
Download memtest86 and test RAM
www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html
Run for 8 passes
If passes try a good stick in each slot for 3 passes
If fails do the same for 8 passes.

Are you are correct describing it as a black screen, it is not a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)?

I think that you actually had a BSOD, hardware related. I will give you our best write up for a BSOD and hardware.

BSOD or as you describe it black screen here is the method that you should use
http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-lockup-debug-how/35349-stop-0x124-what-means-what-try.html

I know that on some systems the BSOD is a black screen and some may call it that. Most here, use the term BSOD, want to be sure of what happened.

No im a PC Tech its a black screen with cursor, as for memory erros, ran 4 pass's of memtest before even working on it, standard procdure.

Before ever working on a computer these steps are taken

Memtest x86 4passes
Seagate Seatools Hard Drive diagnostic

If both pass I preced to work on the machine, if they don't I inform the client, its not a hardware fault, unless its a motherboard going out, but ive already disambled the laptop to check for obvious signs, and none are present.

Its something very unrelated to any known issue ive ever encountered. XP installs and boots fine, 7 installs and boots fine, Vista will not, I tried with my master disks, and just now with an old copy of Vista Home Premium I had in the back after we stoped selling it 6 months ago, even then it does not work, and it doesnt make any sense at all.

Try the Windows 7 upgrade advisor. Although you can run Seven, it may pick up some small problem. Also read my first post,again. I have a bad habit of posting and then adding as I think of things. Just want to be sure you saw the entire post
Windows Upgrade Advisor for Windows Vista - Microsoft Windows

Just to satisfy me, please, follow this procedure and send me the results.

http://www.vistax64.com/crashes-debugging/282419-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

This will satisfy me that there is no mini dump report (for BSOD) and give me a lot more information.