Vista Freezing During Install

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rusty12

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
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I began having trouble with Vista and decided to just do a complete reinstall to fix everything. However I am running into trouble when reinstalling. When I get to the screen where I type in my Windows Vista Product Key, it completely freezes. The mouse cursor is able to move around but when I click on 'Next', nothing happens. I have tried it at least 6 times now but every time I get to this screen no matter what I do, it freezes. I've done a few reinstalls of Vista before but have never had a problem or freeze. Is there a fix or work around for this?

As always, any help is appreciated. Look forward to it. Thanks!
 
I reset my BIOS to its failsafe mode and checked my RAM sticks and everything is fine. It just continues to hang on the "Type your product Key for activation screen" (screen 3). Please someone give me an idea. I don't know what to try now? I am stuck and need to get this desktop up and running for my semester!
 
Actually I just checked for that simple measure literally 5 seconds ago and the answer is no.
 
When I first got Vista Ultimate from the Feedback Program, it took literally 2 hours to install. It kept freezing up at intervals but would eventually move on.

When the installation was finally done, it would always take approximately 30+ minutes for my computer to boot up.

It turned out it was a bad IDE cable on my DVD burner. Swapped the cable and Vista installs only took less than 15 minutes and boot up time takes about 40 seconds from cold boot.

Vista is less forgiving when it comes to bad hardware. You might want to consider finding out what hardware might be worn out or faulty.
 
Thank you for responding!

It is a SATA DVD-drive. I'll try placing the Vista DVD in a different drive and changing the SATA port that the drive uses on the motherboard.

*Update*
I did the above ( ^ ) steps and it still hangs at the 'Type your product key for activation'
 
I have reset the BIOS to failsafe mode so there is absolutely no overclocking occuring.

I am currently letting it sit in its present 'frozen' state hoping it'll magically progress to the next step though I am sure it wont. Its been on the same screen on whats now approaching an hour and I no longer here the DVD drive spin up or anything. I can move the mouse cursor around, but nothing else happens.

In order to further illustrate the problem, when you usually hover your cursor over a button, the button darkens or does some graphical element that shows the cursor is over the button...that does not happen and once I click the mouse, it goes into a fucking coma.


I am at a complete loss right now. I don't know what to do or how to progress. I've always heard if your PC is so FUBAR you just reinstall windows and thats all i am trying to do yet, the fucking thing freezes on me during the installation!
 
I ran Memtest86 as suggested for me to do. I'm not exactly sure how to decipher what it says, but it seems like after running it all night on Test 5, it says 3 errors and its been stuck on Test 8 with the errors running running like a stop watch beginning at 800 and then very rapidly going up to around 32000 and then it starts over again at 800ish. Not sure if that makes sense.
It says the error confidence value is 109. Max contiguous errors is 1.

And the top it says Walltime 5:40:53 (stoped increasing), Pass: 6, Errors: 168, ECC: Off, ECC Errs: 0

So obviously this sounds like I have bad ram, whats the next step? Could this be causing all my troubles?
 
I have run memtest86 for each of my sticks of ram individually and both reportedly have errors! Could this be true? It is suspicious in my mind that both my sticks have gone bad? Is this typical? Could this possibly be related to some other hardware failure, maybe motherboard?

What should I try or do now since both my sticks are supposedly error prone. I don't have any other sticks of ram to swap out and try.
 
I finally received my new RAM today. I just plugged it in and tried to run the Vista DVD installer and I'm getting the same freeze! I'm really starting to get tired of this failure.

Here is a new development, although, I don't believe it has too much to do with my main issue. After putting the Vista DVD in my DVD Burner and it begins to spin up to speed, when it's done spinning, its now making a sound like it's coming to a crashing halt inside the burner. Doesn't sound to good. (*note* I've tried running the Vista DVD in another DVD Rom besides this newly cracked out burner)

What I'll try here in a few moments is run Memtest and see if it picks up errors on these new sticks. That would tell me if the problem originates elsewhere I think. Correct, yes?
 
If you had errors on two sticks before, and are getting the same issues now, most likely it isn't the memory, but the motherboard itself. Or, you are using memory that isn't quite compatible with your board.
 
Azhar said:
Vista is less forgiving when it comes to bad hardware.
Click to expand...

You make it sound like that its Vista's fault for not being able to handle faulty HW. When hardware is faulty, expect NOTHING to work properly.

To the OP, the last time I had lock-ups during an OS install (with linux), it turned out to be the hard drive - it had bad sectors. Get the disk utility from the HD manufacture and scan the HD.
 
GlimmerMan said:
You make it sound like that its Vista's fault for not being able to handle faulty HW. When hardware is faulty, expect NOTHING to work properly.

To the OP, the last time I had lock-ups during an OS install (with linux), it turned out to be the hard drive - it had bad sectors. Get the disk utility from the HD manufacture and scan the HD.
Click to expand...

I wasn't making it sound like anything. I'm just stating what might be going on. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone =P

But if you want my stance, Microsoft is not at fault for bad hardware. =P
 
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