Hi, I'm having issues with installing Windows 7 (or any operating system, for that matter) on my first PC build. I've already gone through massive amounts of troubleshooting/trials and I'm at my wits' end in trying to figure out what the issue is.
System Hardware:
Motherboard: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
CPU: AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 3.5GHz
GPU: Gigabyte WINDFORCE Radeon R9 270
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600 8 GB (4 sticks of 2 GB)
PSU: Corsair CX500
SSD: Samsung 120 GB 840 EVO
HDD: Western Digital 1 TB
When performing clean installs of Windows 7 on any of my hard drives (both of them new) using a USB device I often come across error code 0x80070570 during the "Expanding Files" stage, which halts the installation in its tracks, citing that files are missing or corrupted. Occasionally, however, the setup progresses beyond this point to the first restart where, on reboot, it reveals that there's a missing or corrupt kernel or driver that Windows won't boot without. On slightly rarer occasions, I've been able to get mostly stable iterations of Windows 7 working on the hard drive I've intended to be used as my primary drive (able to run applications like Skype, Google Chrome, Steam and even GPU intensive video games like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 at their max settings)--but these installs are plagued by constant corrupted file downloads and installations which I can only attribute to corrupted registry files or something going wrong with the memory.
Those are the symptoms, in short, but it's frustrating to have to deal with such an inconsistent issue. At first I immediately suspected that the RAM was at fault and went through a massive test phase with memtest86, and though the RAM passed without any errors I still suspected it was wrong and went ahead and bought another pair (which was no real issue as I was already debating whether or not to buy the extra RAM when planning out the build)--it made no difference in the long run as the problems still persisted.
As it stands, I'm at a bit of a crossroads on where to take my next bout of troubleshooting: I've wondered if perhaps the DIMM slots in my motherboard are simply bad but in testing the RAM I also tested all the slots individually and they all booted. The other path I see is that perhaps using a USB boot device is the issue (perhaps the ISOs I've been using are all corrupted or the computer just doesn't like reading from flash drives, as I've used multiple ones to the same result), but I'd really rather be sure of that than buy an optical drive that I'm only going to use once for installing an operating system that may still give me grief during or after the installation.
As an addendum, I also attempted an installation of Ubuntu that was also plagued with the same issue, which leads me to believe it's something to do with the hardware--I just can't pin down exactly what it is. I'm using said computer to type all of this, by the way, so I'd say it's definitely capable of being a stable machine.
Basically, as I'm inexperienced in dealing with this issue, I'm wondering if anyone can offer any advice in solving it. I'd really, really appreciate the help as I'd hate to have invested so much time, care and money into something only to not have it pan out.
System Hardware:
Motherboard: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
CPU: AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 3.5GHz
GPU: Gigabyte WINDFORCE Radeon R9 270
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600 8 GB (4 sticks of 2 GB)
PSU: Corsair CX500
SSD: Samsung 120 GB 840 EVO
HDD: Western Digital 1 TB
When performing clean installs of Windows 7 on any of my hard drives (both of them new) using a USB device I often come across error code 0x80070570 during the "Expanding Files" stage, which halts the installation in its tracks, citing that files are missing or corrupted. Occasionally, however, the setup progresses beyond this point to the first restart where, on reboot, it reveals that there's a missing or corrupt kernel or driver that Windows won't boot without. On slightly rarer occasions, I've been able to get mostly stable iterations of Windows 7 working on the hard drive I've intended to be used as my primary drive (able to run applications like Skype, Google Chrome, Steam and even GPU intensive video games like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 at their max settings)--but these installs are plagued by constant corrupted file downloads and installations which I can only attribute to corrupted registry files or something going wrong with the memory.
Those are the symptoms, in short, but it's frustrating to have to deal with such an inconsistent issue. At first I immediately suspected that the RAM was at fault and went through a massive test phase with memtest86, and though the RAM passed without any errors I still suspected it was wrong and went ahead and bought another pair (which was no real issue as I was already debating whether or not to buy the extra RAM when planning out the build)--it made no difference in the long run as the problems still persisted.
As it stands, I'm at a bit of a crossroads on where to take my next bout of troubleshooting: I've wondered if perhaps the DIMM slots in my motherboard are simply bad but in testing the RAM I also tested all the slots individually and they all booted. The other path I see is that perhaps using a USB boot device is the issue (perhaps the ISOs I've been using are all corrupted or the computer just doesn't like reading from flash drives, as I've used multiple ones to the same result), but I'd really rather be sure of that than buy an optical drive that I'm only going to use once for installing an operating system that may still give me grief during or after the installation.
As an addendum, I also attempted an installation of Ubuntu that was also plagued with the same issue, which leads me to believe it's something to do with the hardware--I just can't pin down exactly what it is. I'm using said computer to type all of this, by the way, so I'd say it's definitely capable of being a stable machine.
Basically, as I'm inexperienced in dealing with this issue, I'm wondering if anyone can offer any advice in solving it. I'd really, really appreciate the help as I'd hate to have invested so much time, care and money into something only to not have it pan out.
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