[rusty12]

I began having trouble with Vista and decided to just do a complete reinstall to fix everything. However I am running into trouble when reinstalling. When I get to the screen where I type in my Windows Vista Product Key, it completely freezes at any point in time when I click the mouse. The mouse cursor is able to move around but when I click on 'Next', nothing happens. I have tried it at least 12 times now but every time I get to this screen no matter what I do, it freezes. I've done a few reinstalls of Vista before but have never had a problem or freeze. Is there a fix or work around for this?

I have reset my BIOS to failsafe mode and checked my ram and everything seems good.

Any help no matter how small is appreciated! I need to get this desktop up and running for my semester that just started!

Thanks!

[rusty12]

Does anybody have any ideas? I am coming close to the point of having to take my computer to a local shop. I have no idea what to do. I can't even perform a basic reinstall of windows for crying out loud!

Any bit of help is welcomed!

[Elvandil]

I'd check that RAM again. Let one of the full tests run for a while (all night if you can).

Check the machine for air flow. Lockups are often heat-related and installation is an intensive process. Remove dust and make sure all fans are running. If you can add cooling with a small fan, try that.

What is on the drive now, and what problems led you to reinstall in the first place?

You could also do a basic check of the drive. Booting with a partitioner and removing the contents of the drive may help.

Free Hard Drive Testing Applications:

Manufacturer's Tests
Victoria for DOS
Victoria for Windows (Both versions of Victoria are among the best and most thorough tests available.)
HD Tune
CheckDisk 1.03 (Marks bad sectors as unusable.)
HDAT2 (Diagnostics and bad sector recovery)
MHDD Low-level Diagnostics
Bootable Hitachi Drive Fitness Test Floppy or CD Image (works on most drives)

Hard Drive Manufacturers' Diagnostic Utilities Links:

TachTech
BleepingComputer

Partitioning Tools-->

Free:

Paragon Partition Manager 8.5-- PPM Special Edition serial and free registration
CloneZilla GParted LiveCD (Complete partitioning and drive imaging/restoration tools)
SystemRescueCD
Gparted LiveCD
Parted Magic
Vista Recovery Disk (Shrink, expand, create, delete partitions)
XP Recovery Console CD image (Create and delete partitions with diskpart.exe)

[rusty12]

Thanks for the response! I'm at school right now and away from my PC so I'll give you the most concise reason as possible as to why I went ahead and decided to reinstall Vista in the first place.

Late last week I turned my PC on from a cold start and it began acting weird from the get go. There were a mix of issues. The first time I started my PC I could hear and see all my fans within the case spinning like it was booting up but saw nothing other than my mouse cursor on the screen everything else was black. I finally got the PC to boot to the desktop but was then greeted with my Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 not working which was unusual (nothing was enabled in the security suite). With no programs running or anything after I just booted up, I went to task manager and noticed my CPU was running at 100% with no applications open. Everything moved extremely slowly. Vista would not connect to my network. It wouldn't even recognize any of the surrounding networks in my area. It saw nothing. I rebooted and made back to the desktop and was greeted by a popup that said windows help and support was not available or didn't open (one or the other) and to contact my system admin. I booted into safemode and tried to run a virus scan but kaspersky said I couldnt run a scan in safemode. I can't even uninstall Kasperksy in safe mode. I can barely do anything in safemode honestly. All I have on my HDD is basically Vista with pics, music, and a computer game. I surf and download legally and safely so I have no idea if I have a virus or what (I shouldn't).

Because of all of the above I decided to reinstall windows as I have all my important stuff backed up on another partition. Yet, of course, I get this issue of not even being able to reinstall Vista.

I do not know if I can run those utilities you suggested seeing how I can't boot into Vista anymore, it just freezes up on the login screen.

When I get home, I'll try doing the install with one stick of ram. I'm also trying to install it using a SATA DVD drive if that helps.

Any other ideas? Thanks for the help!!!

[rusty12]

How do I run one of those HDD utilities to verify my HDD hasn't died on me when I can't really boot into windows?

[Elvandil]

Look through the tests. Many will run from bootable CD's without Windows and run in memory. The memory tests should be done first because the other tests will give false results if memory is defective.

I see why you wanted to re-install, and it definitely sounds like an infection. You need more than Kaspersky. Viruses make up only a small percentage of infections these days, and anti-malware apps are needed, too.

So try the tests. You may find why you can't reinstall and it may be minor. Look for anything that might lead to overheating. If you have a hardware monitor in your BIOS setup, restart the machine and check the temperatures right after one of these failed attempts to see what it is while still hot. Check all your connections.

After you get installed, use anti-malware scanners, too, because even if carefull, almost all machines get infected.

Free anti-malware scanners:

A-Squared
PrevX CSI Free Version
Spybot S&D
RunScanner
Ad-Aware 2007
SuperAntiSpyware
Spyware Eliminator
Emco Malware Destroyer
Spyware Doctor
Arovax Anti-spyware
Trend-Micro Rootkit Buster
F-Secure Blacklight
Bootzilla (Bootable anti-malware CD with many other tools.)

List of freeware security software

[rusty12]

I ran Memtest86 as suggested for me to do. I'm not exactly sure how to decipher what it says, but it seems like after running it all night on Test 5, it says 3 errors and its been stuck on Test 8 with the errors running running like a stop watch beginning at 800 and then very rapidly going up to around 32000 and then it starts over again at 800ish. Not sure if that makes sense.
It says the error confidence value is 109. Max contiguous errors is 1.

And the top it says Walltime 5:40:53 (stoped increasing), Pass: 6, Errors: 168, ECC: Off, ECC Errs: 0

So obviously this sounds like I have bad ram, whats the next step? Could this be causing all my troubles?

*Note*
My airflow seems to be good. My CPU temps are staying low around 36c (I have a rather good CPU heatsink fan on it as well as 3 other 120mm case fans.

[rusty12]

I ran memtest86 on each individual stick of ram that has been in my system and each one has reported errors. I also raised the volt. to my ram's manf. spec. and that did not change anything either. Next step?