installing vista on new motherboard and processor

[socialsupernova]

I built a computer about a year ago and have just decided it was about time for an upgrade. what started as a small upgrade has now turned into spending over a thousand dollars and now I am having a had time getting everything working.

before:
some loud monster case with a cheap 400 watt power supply
P4 3.0ghz with stock heatsink
intel 915gevlk motherboard
74 gig 10k
nvidia 256 7900gt
2gig DDR2 PC 533

Now:
p180
corsair 520watt power supply
E6600 core 2 duo 2.4ghz (i have never overclocked but I am planning to figure it out)
scythe ninja heatsink
some quiet 120mm fans
asus p5b dh deluxe
74 gig 10k
2x 250 wd 7200k RAID 0
nvidia 256 7900gt (soon to be EVGA 8800GTS 640MB)
ATI TV Wonder tuner card
4 gigs DDR2 PC 533 (the other matching ram was free.) i want pc800
Logitech DiNovo Edge, Mx revolution (nice set, would never pay 350 for mouse and keyboard but my bro works at logitech. nice for a media center PC)

I zip tied all my cables down, bought some of the arctic silver thermal paste and an upgrade to vista ultimate. Everything runs like a dream, it's near silent, onboard sound, wifi, raid, and bluetooth mouse and keyboard make the back of my computer look really clean. I made it through the bios, I checked my bios version and it's up to date. I changed my boot order to install windows and everything was running according to plan all the way up until after it loaded windows files. Right before the installation begins! Right after the screen goes black and you see "Microsoft Corporation" faintly in the middle of the screen. I have tried it like 5 times. I have flashed my bios and double checked everything. I dont know what to do and I am so excited to see how much faster and how much farther I could push this computer. Anything suggestions, at this point I am wiling to try anything.

Thanks guys

[Panama Red]

I would remove all extra cards but the vid card and make sure no card readers or other usb devices are plugged in. If you're using a usb mouse/kbd, temporarily remove them and use PS/2 devices. Disconnect all hard drives but the ones you intend to use for the OS install. One piece of personal advice. Running Raid 0 is a risky venture for data corruption. The perfomance increase is so small it isn't worth the risk. And if you intend to oc, you're really asking for trouble with a Raid 0 configuration. I would recommend installing Vista on one drive and use the other for backup storage.

[glc]

Don't plan on doing any overclocking with DDR2-533 - that's already 1:1 ratio at stock speeds.

[socialsupernova]

so I unplugged everything connected to my computer and tried to install XP. As soon as I formated my hard drive my back up pc encounters so I haven't been able to be online. nonetheless I managed to get pretty far in the installation, much further than with vista. mid way through the installation I get an error message telling me that a file is missing. How can a file be missing from the disc i bought from microsoft? I checked out the back of the cd and it has no scratches at all.

So last night I burned an copy of another XP CD off the internet, thinking that maybe the new cd must have the file if it's required to install windows. Sure enough it found the file and It continued without a hitch until it asked for my serial number. how can this cd key not work on this computer. I have only installed it once on this computer before?

does anyone else ever just feel like it's just one thing after another?

[glc]

Sorry, can't help you with installing from a burned CD that you downloaded - that's piracy. If you have a genuine CD and it's become defective, Microsoft will replace it.

It might be your ram - 533 speed could be iffy.