Can't install Vista 64 bit

[pmcs]

Quick breakdown of the problem. Everything shows up in bios, hard drive, ram, processor, etc and everything looks like it is functioning correctly but when it tries to load Vista it "installs files" gets to the green bar screen and I start to see the hour glass and the system just resets. It does this over and over again until I turn it off.

Here is my build

Phenom II 945
Asus Crosshair III Formula
EVGA GTX 260
4 gigs Patriot Viper Ram 1600 (ram is supported by motherboard according to Asus website)
500 Gb WD Caviar Black SATA
750 W Corsair Power

Ok, so I have looked around and it looks like there can be issue with Vista 64 and SATA drives. I have tried plugging the drive into the four different SATA ports but same thing each time. I got different ram and a different SATA hard drive and the same issue, so the ram and hard drive are ok.

Hopefully this is something stupid, but I am pretty frustrated at the moment. Would greatly appreciate any advice.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Did you manually set the RAM speed/timings/voltage to the manufacturers specs in the BIOS? If not, I would. I would also run memtest86+ for a few hours to test for RAM errors. You can get memtest86+ here - www.memtest.org

 

[photonboy]

Get a copy of the Ubuntu Live CD and see if you can start it. The CD will not use the hard drive.

If you can run Ubuntu then your issue is narrowed down to:

1) hard drive
2) SATA controller for hard drive
3) Vista (bad disc?)

I know you say the hard drive is fine.

I find a corrupt Vista disc the most likely scenario.

 

[pmcs]

Thanks yo both of you for the suggestions. The people at Asus seem to think it is a ram issue so I will manaully adjust the settings as you suggested. I will also attempted to install the Ubuntu Live CD. My one remaining questions is how to install the SATA controll for the hard drive. Is that something I would get from the Asus website of from windows?