Need help. PC will not boot properly

[brightfutureahead]

To anyone willing to help,
I have a personally built PC, the first one ever, and am having trouble getting it to boot. I purchased and downloaded Windows 7 upgrade, ran it, and it suggested I exit installation, and restart my computer, and restart, which I did. Now I can not get the PC to boot correctly. It performs a check disk process, and then once it starts moving through the rest of the process, to where it would normally go to the log in screen, I am given this message "Interactive logon process initialization has failed. Please consult the event log for more details." So I click OK, and one of three things happens, It starts the restart process all over again, the screen goes black, or the message pops up, again, and again, and again, and again, and so forth. Any advice.

The build is as follows:

Intel i7 920 CPU
Asus P6T Motherboard
6 gigs Corsair memory
Radeon HD 4890 graphics
Windows Vista Home Premium

I am new to this world, so if any information is missing, please let me know.

I appreciate any help in advance.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Suggest you reformat and do clean or custom install:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20146-custom-install-windows-7-a.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

[brightfutureahead]

I would do that, except for the fact that I can not get anywhere in order to set that up. I can not get to any menus, options, or settings.

 

[mattak]

You can change it to boot from the DVD drive in the BIOS. Using the install CD you should be able to repair, format and start over, etc.

 

[tarquinbiscuitbarrel]

you downloaded windows 7 upgrade? do you have a disk with windows 7 on it?

not sure if it works with windows 7, but in previous versions of windows you could use another computer to burn the windows boot files onto a disk manually (you can find the boot files on the internet).

then try to repair it.

if you're not so computer savvy, don't worry, you can always get into bios and tell it to boot from your optical drive. this will work 100% if you have a working drive and the boot file disk in the drive.


important: i hear really bad things with regards to these 'upgrade to win 7' stories. you should always do a fresh install. in my experience windows upgrades often go kaputt and leave your os in tatters. service pack 2 anyone? :X