Horrible problems with my homebuilt system.

[thetriscuit]

I had just built my brand new system this week and I was pretty excited
The current configuration is:
Q9400 Quad Core
Patriot Viper 2GB DDR3
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (OEM)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit (OEM)
ASUS P5Q3 DELUXE/WIFI-AP CH1-11 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

On the first installation of Vista it froze halfway through expanding the files so i restarted and installed Vista again. (without formatting or anything)
Then after getting everything set up and me being really happy with my new system I restarted after installing the ASUS motherboard CD drivers, Graphics Card drivers and my NOD32 anti-virus. and things were going smooth until I restarted again after updating vista... it installed the updates and such while shutting down but then when booting up and configuring the updates it would constantly freeze halfway through. So I would end up restarting and restarting trying to get it to go through. so then I ended up booting it in safe mode and it went through and configured it alright. but then restarted and while booting up windows normally it freaking would always freeze on the vista logo (w/black bg) or on the log in screen. i would constantly constantly restart and restart and restart until it finally let me (omg when i got here it crashed again thank you firefox for saving it) log in. so i formatted hte hard drive got a new DVD drive and installed vista again. now it quit between copying and expanding files!! so i restarted, reformatted and reinstalled. worked this time. but now it's doing the same thing as before wheere it freezes on start up, even worse after attempting updates again.
is it my hardware configuration?
I still have my other IDE 300gb hard drive and IDE Dvd drive hooked up. could that be causing problems?
I also have 500watt Power Supply and ATI 2600xt graphics card.
please help and thanks a bunch!

 

[PCSoul]

What kind of powersupply do you have? (brand /model)

I would remove the extra IDE harddrive and cd for now. Two less things to cause a problem. Then Check the Bios settings (all of them). You could also check and see if there is a Bios update available (not sure if that is the real problem here though).

After Vista was loaded were there any conflicts in the hardware? Sorry for only general information, but nothing jumps out at me to point a finger at and say heres your problem. A weak powersupply was my first thought, but it also sounds like a hardware/driver conflict that is hanging the system. Why is Vista being difficult on the install? That's the real question.

I have an Asus P5Q motherboard and had zero problems on install, but I'm using XP Pro 32bit.... Apples and Oranges when comparing to Vista 64bit

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

Try installing vista on your old drive. If you have two dvdroms now and don't use both, it's best to remove one

 

[techgeek]

I would try running Memtest.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

It can be downloaded at the link above. Let it run for several hours. If you start getting errors, you have bad RAM or possibly incorrect/insufficient voltage being supply to the RAM. If the RAM errors in a specific section of RAM consistently, try to determine which (if you have more than one stick) DIMM is at fault. If it comes as a kit, the reseller or manufacturer will have your return the entire kit, but at least you can use the one stick to get your OS up and running and then RMA the RAM.

 

[Crashman]

I also have 500watt Power Supply and ATI 2600xt graphics card.
please help and thanks a bunch!

It's probably your power supply. If you had a good one, you would have named it. So, I have to assume that you have a 150W power supply with a 500W rating made by some chinese company that cost around $15.