Please Help!! Cannot figure out the problem

Here are my system specs :

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.5
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
OCZ Reaper DDR2 1066 PC2 8500 RAM 8 gigs (4 sticks of 2gb)
Geforce 8800 GTS video Card

Let me start by saying that I am in IT support Sales and would consider myself a level 2 tech. But my new home built pc from newegg is doing some crazy stuff. After installing Vista 64, ( about 8 times) with a legal copy all sorts of things crazy things starting happening. It would take forever for windows update to work. Trying the same updates like 40 times. And then after everything was updated random services started to stop. IP Helper, Spooler, BITS would stop. It would pop up and say activate i would activate and it would say thank you and then later it would ask again. No matter how many times i tried to get it to work it would not. I thought OK, I will update the bios, did that same problems. Then I burned another copy of Vista 64 from our NAS at work. Same problems, then I even went and downloaded a hacked copy via the net and same problems. I am sure, as with all other things, it is something simple that is going wrong. I have read threads about OCZ ram not working well with Gigabyte boards, but could ram really cause all those problems. Any suggestions. Right now i am forced to use windows xp pro and 3.25 gigs or RAM on my desk in a static bag is 2 2 gig sticks of RAM just wanting to be installed. Should of bought a dell

The sad part is technically i dont need 8 gb of RAM. I do some video editing but i am sure 4gb is enough. I did read about installing 64 with only 2gb of RAM, i tried that and i still had issues. The harddrive is a new 1tb Western Digital Caviar Black SATA. I have installed my other older hard drives, but the first install was with only the new one installed. I may try to install 64 one more time. If so i will post the errors.