Vista won't load - which piece of hardware is to blame?

[fueledbymetal]

I recently finished a new build with the following new parts:

Core 2 Duo E8400
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L
Sapphire 4859 512 MB
2x1GB DDR2 1066 OCZ
Vista Home Premium 64
WD 500GB 7200rpm SATA

On my first attempt, the initial installation went OK, but it crashed while I was installing video card drivers and would then crash within a few minutes of rebooting. I tried to reinstall Vista but the DVD drive wasn't spinning up. So, I installed a new DVD drive (and installed a new Antec 650W power supply, I was previously using an old Antec 400W). I tried installing Vista again but it crashed every time with one of the three following errors:

1 -Unexpected IO error Faulty HD or CD-Rom

2 - File header checksum does not match computed checksum

3 - Bad Spool Header blue screen

I'm going to RMA the Hard Drive, but was wondering if these symptoms point to something else being bad. The case fans work fine and everything seems cool.

 

[KGB]

Try running MamTest86 first. Let it run multiple passes.

 

[fueledbymetal]

I'll give it a shot when I get my new Hard drive. Any other ideas on what might cause this problem? Bad mobo or processor?

 

[boomerang]

What voltage does that memory want to run at? Make sure in the BIOS, that the memory settings match.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: fueledbymetal
I'm going to RMA the Hard Drive, but was wondering if these symptoms point to something else being bad.

Have you tried the drive as a slave in a working PC to see if the drive is actually bad?