BleepingComputer.com: New Build

hi all, my mate has just finished his home build and when he trys to install an os,,,, any os, it always freezes at the expanding files part,,, it once got to 76%,,, he wants to install vista home prem,,, i also told him to try xp,,, his and mine,,, same thing happens,,, here's a list of what we have tryed so far,,,
unpluged everything thats not needed for the install,,, had the hdd, the disc drive, psu, processor, mouse and keyboard,,, still no joy,,, used a differant disc drive,, swapped round the ram,,, tested the ram and the hdd,,, no errors,,, looked in the bios at the settings for the hdd,,, there set to sata, no raid. temps for the cpu are around 40c which is ok, voltage's are all set to auto and the peramaters are well with in with what hardware he has,,, everything is FSB 1333,,, ram, mobo, cpu.
still every time he try's to install an os it stops at expanding files part.

here are some links to his stuff,,,
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....rodid=CP-192-IN
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....3%20Motherboard
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....0(OCZ3P13332GK)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....s)%20-%20Retail
650 w psu
300gb sata hdd,,, dont know which one,,, i'll ask him tonight
thanks all

I haven't installed my copy of Vista...does the SATA driver have to be installed?

I know that you say that the system BIOS recognizes the SATA drive properly...no other hard drives connected?

What was done to test the RAM? Did you run Memtest for at least one complete pass (about 2hours-plus)?

Louis

hi Louis,,, no there's only 1 hdd and its a 500gb,,,, i ran a bootable mem test and hdd test disc,,, made 2 passes of each,,, i have googled this and there's a few probs and fixes out there but non have worked yet,,, he tryed it with the drivers in but same story,,,,, is there a way to format the disc form the bios to ntfs???
thanks.

Well...memory errors can prevent install of Windows.

The installing program loads into RAM...from which the files are then passed onto the hard drive.

So...memory errors are a concern in my world .

Louis

hi Louis,,, sorry for the late reply,,, he ran a longer ram test and it found errors, so he's going to RAM the ram for some new stuff,,,, thanks for the help,,,,,
regards,,,,,Ian