Vista - This is driving me insane / BSOD

When I finally had the money for a new PC I wanted to make sure its a good one for the (at least near) future.

My Hardware :
Quad Q6600 2.4
4x2GB 800 Mhz (need 8GB for virtual machines)
Asus Striker Extreme
XFX 8800 Ultra
SATAII Raptors

When I first build the PC I was unable to install it at all ... First the installation took ages to show me the first screen (which language). I tried to install Vista Business.

After about 8 hours googling and so on I found an article that installations of Vista with more than 3 GB Ram might fail.

Easy enough, I removed 3 sticks and tried to install with just 2 GB .. same issue ... After several Bios updates - including some weird ones, I was still unable to install Vista .. I then tried to install Windows XP x64 which installed just fine .. an upgrade to Vista gave me also a bluescreen.

During the night I suddenly had a hunch .. I went to the office and took the ram from my work station .. it has the same Ram, just 2x1GB ...

Installation started quickly and installation did not fail until the last reboot .. this gave me another bluescreen but after that BSOD it was fine .. I run all Windowsupdates / patches and was able to run all full 8 GB of Ram and the system runs rock solid since ....

Although I must also say that at the time I used those 1GB ram sticks I also disabled Raid (although I would have loved to run a mirrored system) so I am not sure what at the end "fixed" the problem.

Anyhow .. now my MediaCenter died and I thought : Ey, Ultimate is the solution ... ok .. so I purchased the upgrade .. DVD in, Next > Next > Next .. ages later ... QUICK bluescreen - reboot - loop ..

First it was weird to see three menu points in the start menu ...Vista, Rollback and Vista again .. Alarming that an upgrade already gives the option to roll back but two options to run Vista ?

Well, long story short ... I was stuck in a loop .. no way to upgrade to Ultimate ... I rolled back (at least that worked 100%) and disabled the option to reboot after crash .. same thing ... you just see a split second the BSOD and it reboots .. No crashdump on HDD, no Log, nothing ...

Since I have an Acronis image on a 2nd disk (as I didn't have the mirror) I formated and started the installation from scratch ... fair enough .. installation kinda goes through .. bluescreen ... tried less Ram (same as I used with Business) ... bluescreen ....

So to make a very long story short - I am unable to run Vista Ultimate (x64) for unknown reason ..

I have the feeling it is the motherboard .. but some websites (including overclockers.co.uk) selling complete systems with a Quad, Asus Striker Extreme which obviously has to work ... Weird tho - the driver are horribly old ... which is a bad sign considering how young Vista actually is ..

I mean I am happy that Business is rock solid - sure - but it drives me crazy that I cannot run Ultimate for an unknown reason .. Considering that Business runs rock solid I just don't think this is a Ram issue or a hardware issue in general.

Anyway .. who else has the problem and did someone find a fix ?

Have you tried a different, cleanly formatted hard drive? Try with no SATA to begin with.

Tried that .. same problem. I was able to install Business just fine but Ultimate not ...

But I solved the problem last night. Well, actually Microsoft did... Whatever it is which is causing the bluescreen in Ultimate - it is fixed in SP1 ...

Once I downloaded MSDN Vista including SP1 SLIPSTREAMED it installed damn fast - 35 Minutes - and no bluescreen. But as I said - Business and below - perfect - Ultimate - needs SP1 ...

So since you need to uninstall SP1 until the 30th of June (and before installing SP1 full) which won't be possible with slipstreaming, I'll wait until Q1 2008 before upgrading to Ultimate ..

Vista WITH SP1 slipstreamed???? What the heck!! I didn't expect msft to put that up for DL. Snagging it now. Thanks for the heads up!! With ATI releasing Catalyst 7.12 today or tomorrow I smell a wipe/reinstall in my future. Not having to do SP1 manually will cut about 25 minutes off the rebuild time.

Gomjaba - Have you installed KB929777? That's the one that fixes the memory error. I am unsure if it's part of SP1, though it should be.

This was the very first thing I did when I had my first BSOD .. I even slipstreamed it ...

Didn't make any difference... What I did try yesterday was slipstreaming ALL hotfixes from Ultimate and Business (all which been released after a fresh installation).

Same thing - unable to install Ultimate .. What I had to do now is updating Business to SP1 and use the SLIPSTREAMED DVD to upgrade to Ultimate ..

I don't see an option to remove the SP1 so I hope I can just install SP1 Retail over the RC1 when released ...

I really want to know which hotfix in that SP1 fixes my BSOD problem. Half of them are not even available for download and no hotfix sounds like it could be it .. so I have no bloody idea ..