Ok guys, I am here because I need some serious help. I am about to blow my head out trying to figure out why something I though that was going to be so simple is so effin difficult to figure out. Let's start out with my system:

Dell XPS 420. (Yes it is old but runs like a champ, well did)
4 Gb memory
2.4 gig quad core i believe
Nvidia GTX 480

So the start of the problem. I got some horrible trojan horse that rendered my computer useless. Ended up getting a new hard drive because I figured it would be nice to start with a clean install with a bigger drive. I was going to clean off the old hard drive and donate to a friend in need.

Installed new hard drive. Got my old Vista disk out and installed vista. Im feeling good. I already have the driver for my video card on a thumb drive and install that. No internet so I dl the driver for that on my work laptop and install it. Woo interwebs!! Try to install DIABLO 3. Need newer version of windows. Ok time to update. Spend hours doing automatic updates. Some fail I dl fixes. I get absolutely frustrated. So I dl a stand alone installer for SP1 and SP2. Wipe the drive and start all over. Cant get pass the SP1 install because I get the ntoskrnl.exe error. I have searched online and have tried many different solutions for the past week. I need some serious help. I just want to play Diablo lol. I am absolutely ashamed it has come to this but I can't get anything done as far as progress. If someone could walk me through something I would be very grateful. Please dumb down whatever it is as much as possible.

Thanks so much in advance.

No blue screen of death just a windows error screen that is all black with white font. wont even load windows now. I have tried booting from my disk and repairing but no luck from that end.

It will not boot in safe mode.

Ok I will try this tonight. I am at work but will be able to try the ubuntu install in about 10 hours. Just a heads up I have nothing to back up. This is an install on a new hard drive. The only thing that is on it at the moment is the windows that is on and off. I also have a spare hard drive with pre sp1 on it i can use to wipe this drive clean.

ok. I am dowloading ubuntu. I have imgburn dowloaded but not installed on my work laptop. I would like to not install it on here if at all possible.

Ubuntu is going to take over an hour just to dl because the internet at this temporary apartment sucks. So I decided to wipe the brand new hard drive again and want to start from new. Is there anything we can do in the hour it takes ubuntu to dl. it is possible that i didn't have something installed that could cause sp1 to crash, i.e. drivers and what not. I was going straight from a fresh vista install to sp1 no steps in between. the only drivers i can think that i would need off the top of my head is the driver for my video card and the ethernet driver. i know sp2 does not include sp1 which i hate, but does sp1 include everything from the first vista up until sp1 was released

so should i go ahead and install the vista that came on the disk or wait to see what ubuntu does. sorry if i seem a bit eager but i have been working on this for over a week now with no success