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General discussion

Vista Ultimate wont install Blue screen

Aug 28, 2010 7:36AM PDT

OK noob here. I have a whitebox computer i bought a couple years ago has windows vista business on it. Got a virus a couple months ago and decided to do a fresh install of my os.I didn't get a copy of the product key I've contacted the seller of this computer and he no longer has any.Vista Business runs fine but the validation is going to run out in 22 days so i decided to put a copy of vista ultimate i have in.usually i get to about 20% in expanding files and it does a reboot and i get the bluescreen with a 07b error This has happened about 20 times with the exception of once it got all the way to the welcome screen as soon as i touched my mouse it went back to blue screen.Now details about the system, Intel Duo E8500 3.16 cpu
Evga 780I SLI motherboard
6 gb of ram GeForce 7800Gtx graphics card
Hp DVD Writer 740b
Lite on combo SHC-4857K SCSI
Seagate ST 31003 40 AS SCSI hd 1 Tb tried all the usual tricks ram non essential devices no luck not a bad disk have 3 btw using 64 bit thanks in advance

Discussion is locked

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bluescreen with a 07b error
Aug 28, 2010 8:50AM PDT
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bluescreen
Aug 30, 2010 2:08PM PDT

i'm pretty sure its not the hard drive and i did try it with another i tried with as little as 1 gig of ram too. I think it may be the version of ultimate its a early version without service packs I'
ve even had the pc in a shop and they couldn't get it installed> I think i'm gonna try and find someone with a version that at least has sp1 and use my product key. If that doesnt work I'll just but windows 7 seeing as how the ultimate was free anyway but thanks for the suggestion.

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After watching someone recently go through this.
Aug 30, 2010 8:29PM PDT

I strongly suggest trying ANY other hard drive.

And to repeat. BIOS DEFAULTS, no USB devices plugged in, NO OVER CLOCKING, etc.
Bob

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bluescreen
Aug 30, 2010 10:55PM PDT

tried different hard drive and bios defaults

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Any other big clues?
Aug 30, 2010 11:42PM PDT

I missed WHY the reinstall is required. For example one owner had a virus and has to zero fill the drives as they all had some odd ball boot sector virus. Very hard and a long discussion about how this works.

Let me share a few other ideas.

1. DUPLICATE THAT INSTALL DVD. Windows is known to bluescreen if there are read errors on the install media. It's a shame it didn't cough up an old Abort, Retry, Ignore error like the days of old.

2. Install Linux. Specifically Ubuntu. If that fails to install, it's a sign there are hardware issues.

3. SET THE DATE! I've run into install failures and BSODs when the date is far off.

Good luck,
Bob

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At first I thought about the 6GB RAM.
Aug 30, 2010 3:51AM PDT