Problems Installing Windows 7/xp on a new build

So I just received some new computer parts today:

AMD Phenom II x4 960t
8gb patriot pc3 10666 ram
ASUS M5A78L-M LX motherboard

I've installed the new parts but am having a lot of difficulty installing windows. I've tried installing both windows 7 and winxp multiple times with no luck. Both of the CDs have worked in the past, and there aren't any visible scratches or damage to them. Win7 and xp freeze at random points during the installation, usually during the "completing installation" or unpacking files stage.

I've tried the installation with two different DVD drives, with only one ram stick, various bios settings, etc. One thing that I've also noticed is that it will fail to boot unless being powered off completely. For example, after the initial stage of copying/unpacking files the usual reset that windows does to continue with the installation results in only a black screen (no beep) ; however, when I power down the computer completely then start it up, the installation Is able to continue but only to eventually freeze.

One install did actually work, however after installing a few drivers it started freezing while windows was starting up. It would start in safe mode and I did a system restore but it continued to freeze. I figured at that point I had nothing to lose and began trying another reinstall - and now it won't work at all.

This seems like bad hardware to me, however I would really like to troubleshoot this issue before I resort to sending these parts back.

Sometimes bad ram will cause that.. take out one stytick then the other and retry
....

Any one of those three can cause that kind of problem. I've seen flaky CPU's cause that problem when I tried to upgrade to a better but used CPU. Had to put the old one back. RAM typically causes BSOD at some random memory location. The whole reboot issue sound like a MOBO issue to me. Good luck, hope this helps.

Hi Columns


see if the BIOS has a setting to turn off level 3 or Level 2 CPU cache

A long time ago I bought a OEM AMD Althon XP cpu which had been zapped by static and the level 2 cache was damaged

I had the choice of complete instability and being unable to install Windows or a very slow but stable system.

The seller accepted responsibility as he had walked across his store room before putting the oem cpu into a antistatic container

regards

Mike Barnes

Definitely not my hard drive, just did a clean install with no issues using my old motherboard/proc/ram. This is really quite infuriating.

Exchanging the mobo and ram, hopefully it's not the processor.