Gears of War won't install

Help! My new copy of Gears won't install on my vista x64 machine.

It installed perfectly fine on an XP SP2 machine, but hangs on install on my vista machine. Attempted install three times.

For those of you who have installed the game, you know that it goes through three phases; 1. Validating the installation 2. Copying game files 3. Decompressing game files.
My install hangs after stage three. At this point the optical drive sounds like it is seeking back and forth, like it is looking for something on the disc (I already checked, this disc is flawless, no scratches). This usually runs for 10 minutes solid until I eject the disc and put it back in to see if that helps (it doesn't).

Attached is a screen of what happens to the installer window when it fails. I try to click on the icon in the taskbar, but nothing happens.

I have all the latest vista updates and the latest video/audio drivers for my system.
Any help is much appreciated.

Hi there
I have the excact same problem but within 32x vista

Gets to decompressing files then at the end, cd drive does searches then get a message pls insert the correct GOW dvd.
Then after that it minimises like your screenshot and nothing?

Any help out there??

Have a look at your error logs and post what they say.
You get to them by;

Left Click on Start Menu.
Right click on Computer and choose manage.
Click on the event viewer.
You now have loads of options to try and pin down what is happening.
Expand the error tab.
Look for things in the last 24 hours.

Hope this gives you the right direction. If it helps please reply to the forum as it will help others.

Thanks for your help
I have looked into the errors that occured at the time of installing and i have a load that lead to the cdrom which says The device, \Device\CdRom0, has a bad block.

Ah i have succesfully installed it on our Windows XP machine so it must be somthing to do within vista?

Have you tried putting the game on a different vista machine, your cd drive may be on its way out. Try copying the cd onto your computer and install from there.

Its a new Sony NEC Optiarc SATA drive which appears to be faulty
I fitted the IDE old dvd rom drive back in and tried re-installing and it installed fine.

Il have to RMA the drive

Thanks for your assistance roy!

I have problem too with this game. But in my cause, i can install GoW and then i can't run it

Sometimes it's working, but for a while ( only menu ), and i must use ctr-alt-del



I checked my system ( Windows Home Premium 64bit ) with other games like:

- Bioshock - PASSED
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare - PASSED
- Medal of Honor Airborne - PASSED
- Crysis - PASSED
- DIRT - PASSED

Maybe this problem is through Sevice Pack which i have installed and then uninstalled ?