Vista - *sigh* nothing but headaches.

I have administration rights, and this is a fresh install on a formatted partition of my harddrive. This is driving me insane. It was working prior but I had to reinstall to get the drivers for my network adapter to work.

I have tried reformatting TWICE and it's still giving me trouble.

Here's some examples:

Latest 8800 GTS drivers:

1) Publisher could not be verified... etc. etc: I click Run
2) UAC does its annoying stuff: I click Allow
3) NVIDIA Windows Vista x64 Display Drivers has stopped working.
4) Close the program
5) The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005) Click OK to terminate the application: Click OK
6) NVIDIA Windows Vista x64 Display Drivers has stopped working.
7) Close the program
8) Lower right corner states the program was closed. (No crap)

Firefox 2.0.0.7

1) Publisher could not be verified... etc. etc: I click Run
2) UAC does its annoying stuff: I click Allow
3) Firefox has stopped working.
4) The program might have not installed correctly

Sound Blaster X-Fi Drivers (Latest)

1) UAC does its annoying stuff: I click Allow
2) Self installation has stopped working

I also get a "80200053" error in Windows update... and I dont know what this means. I've never seen it and can't find much of anything on it.

Any help is appreciated!

Well, I assume you get your network adapter to work (Is it a netgear?)

Try unplugging it, see if you get the same problems

Right click the driver file and select run as administrator.

You should take full ownership of all volumes and disable UAC.

That would end all install problems. Be sure ou have working AV, FW and spyware applications running before disableing UAC if you choose to do so.

On your windows update problem, try going to Windows > SoftwareDistribution > Download and remove or delete everything in the folder (I deleted mine). That should let you download windows updates. Which in return should solve some other compatibility problems.

Also to turn off uac: go to the control panel, click on User Accounts, click on Turn User Account Control on or off, uncheck it and click on OK.

Nice one. Did not know that..ill have to remember that one if I get any problems.

Thank god! It works, now i managed to install one update of 5

This should be a sticky!

Guys... this is driving me nuts. I've reformatted my computer THREE times and it's still giving me "No you can't install this, I know whats better for you, I'm Vista" crap. I was able to install my wireless drivers but after that it just doesn't do anything.

I can't even get Firefox to install. I'm stuck with this horrible unintuitive Internet Explorer interface....

Don't run install files directly from the web - Put them somewhere convenient, right click, and select Run As Administrator.

Of course I've tried that.

"The publisher could not be verified" blah blah blah

Click Run, Firefox has stopped working! Hurrah!

I appreciate the help, honestly I do. I wish I could complain to Microsoft and get this software off my hands and get my money back. This infuriates me. My system works totally fine on XP.

Try running the installers in both compatibility mode and with admin rights. Then set the installed programs for compatibility mode and admin rights (if needed) after they are successfully installed.