Vista install slow and will not complete

Hi, about a week ago I decided to do a clean install of Vista to replace
my XP and Ubuntu. After formatting my drive and starting the
installation I noticed an excessive load time by the Vista DVD, after
the green bar appears and it says loading Windows I get the Vista
background and from there it takes close to ten minutes to load the
screen that asks you to select your region and language. This continues
throughout the whole installation requiring more time then usual to load
screens. Then I get to "select drive" I find my drive, WD 4000KS 400gb
SATA, and here I've tried everything from formatting to partitioning.
Once I click next I get to the screen that says Copying, expanding, etc,
there it begins copying but it just jumps from 0%-100% complete, then it
goes to expanding and after a minute or so I get "missing file" and
installation fails (this I'm assuming is because the copying step is
obviously not copying the files). Then I restart and it's back to square
one. I can't figure this out and I've been trying for a week now, I've
tried installing XP that now fails, tried using two different optical
drives, tried copying the disk to see if it was potentially too scuffed
up, tried using the DATALIFEGUARD provided by western digital and non of
this works. I would really appreciate any input or suggestions, I'm a
college student and not having a working computer right now around
finals sucks lol. Thanks.

I'm using
MSI K9N65GM-V Motherboard
WD 4000KS 400GB SATA hard drive
2x 1GB Kingston memory
HP dvd 1040 optical drive
and an unknown Emprex dvd drive


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Spliiit

Hello Spliiit,

It seems that you have done your homework by testing other CD/DVD
drives and your Vista installation disc.

In addition to what you have done, you might use a different data cable
for the CD/DVD drive to see if the old one is bad or has a bad connector
on one end. It could also be a bad hard drive, so you might test
installing on another hard drive to see it works then to.

Hope this helps some,
Shawn

Also check or replace the SATA cable. They are notoriously finicky.

Once I click next I get to the screen that says Copying, expanding, etc,
there it begins copying but it just jumps from 0%-100% complete, then it
goes to expanding and after a minute or so I get "missing file" and
installation fails (this I'm assuming is because the copying step is
obviously not copying the files).

My computer has been doing this for quite some time now. I know it's
not the harddrive, as I have tried it on more than one, and the problem
surfaced out of the blue. I know it's not the drive, as I've used more
than one, and I know it's not the disc, because it works fine in other
systems. I ALSO know it can't be the RAM as I was having this problem
before and after I installed all new ram.