Vista - BSOD upon Vista Home Premium Install

Ok, so I skimmed through a few of the forums and haven't found a thread
with my proble, so I'm sorry if this is a repeat, I'm new to
Vistabanter. So anyway, here's my deal.

Last November I built my own computer (AMD Athlon 64X2, 2 gigs of ram
512mg video card, and a brand new 160gig SATA drive). I had installed a
cracked version of Windows XP SP2, and shortly afterwards I had recieved
a copy of Vista Home Premium from Microsoft (Compliments from them for
testing some software, and written them a report). I installed Vista
over XP and it installed smoothly, and I had not had any major
problems. About 3 months ago, my power supply went out on my computer
and it took my motherboard with it. I have just now gotten enough money
to buy myself a new power supply (500W, my old one was 680W), and I
replaced the motherboard (Same one).

I started up vista and was having several complications, one of which
was that Vista was looking for a floppy drive, which there wasn't one
in the computer any longer. After troubleshooting I found that there
was one specific way to actually get Vista to load outside of Safe
Mode, and I soon found that my problem was that ALL of Vista's boot
files were corrupted. I could not replace the files even through DOS (I
created a start-up disk), because of Vista's security protection.

So I put in Vista's DVD Rom and tried repairing Vista from the Disc...
Vista couldn't repair itself, and the problem was still there. So I
backed up all the files I needed on a seperate hard drive and formatted
my main drive completely, with a NTSA Reccommended format, the the hard
drive was is as if I had just bought it brand new.

I start the installation and enter the key code and vista starts
installing. After it finishes the first part, where it says Extracting
files, expanding files, updating, etc... it completes that part and as
soon as it gets to the Completeing installation section the computer
restarts. Sometimes it goes into the window where it says Vista is
starting for the first time, sometimes it goes into the routine start
up screen, but either way it always goes to the Blue Screen of Death.

I've tried this at least 5 different times, and once I even installed
XP first and tried installing Vista from XP. The installation looked
like it was working a lot better, got a little farther, but still the
same outcome, BSOD.

Normally I would think that maybe my 160Gig SATA drive is the problem,
but Vista did install just fine before, I even tried removing my 512mg
video card, although I think I did already have that card installed
before I had Vista. I can't think of anything else aside from maybe my
disc is faulty, but it is rather clean, I've always kept it inside the
case. I'm out of ideas. Any help?




--
Romantic.101

I had disconnected all my other drives as I was installing, so that part
is already done. I have been trying to install on a single clean SATA
drive. Also I had reset the BIOS to factory using the C-MOS to make
sure that wasn't the problem. How exactly do I run a memory diagnostic?
Iam good with computers, but I am still a noob. And also, the DVD Drive
I am using came straight from Pioneer, this is the first time using it,
do you think it would need to be cleaned?

Anyway, I will try those and get back to you here. Thanks for the quick
reply.

-Eric




--
Romantic.101

Thanks for all the help, I bought a disc repair kit, and also installed
XP with service pack 2, and took out the video card and one stick of
RAM and installed as many drivers as I could that May make a difference
on XP, and then tried to install Vista once again, and finally it
worked. I have no idea what the problem was, but anyway, thanks for the
tips; I know that one of my problems was one of my sticks of RAM, as it
had blue screened again after I put it back in, and then when I took it
back out, the computer booted fine again. But anyway, thanks again!

-Romantic.101




--
Romantic.101