alright... so ive been having lots of problems with vista since i first had it installed on my pc. I have gotten numerous stop errors even after i took it back to the pc store to have it checked out as good to use. i gave up on it figuring that eventually there will be some patch to fix all these abrupt crashes, but after the last one i cannot start my pc up. it starts up and precedes to the "i crashed last time how do you want me to start up now" screen which includes the safe mode boot up. i've tried all the ways to boot the computer up: safe mode, normal mode, and last good configuration, but after selecting an option the screen goes black and does not change no matter how long i let it sit there. i have contacted the store that loaded vista for me and they recomended that i should remove all unessecary parts and connections and try to start the pc up that way, but it didnt do anything different. does anyone have any advise on what to do? my system is this: intel Dp965 LT running a 2.4 dual core processor 430W power supply Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS video card Creative X-Fi sound card 2 gigs of G Skill RAM Win TV tuner and some other non essencial parts. are these parts compatible do you know? if it helps i was running the daemon tools program before the last crash but this wasnt the first time i had used it. Thanks for any input, -P

All your hardware is compatibile. Have you tried a system repair?

how do i do that?

on the very firat boot page, tap the f-11 key to start a system recovery

Why in the world would you have opted to go with Vista??? Give Vista a few "years" before trying to use it again. Go back to XP for now. I had to wait until about 2 years ago before I switched to XP from 98se. XP just wasnt mature enough for my needs and still isnt for the most part, but with more and more software not supporting 98se, I had to migrate.

I seemed to fix the problem while at the same time creating more. I loaded in my Vista disk and did a fix through booting up with the cd. once i thought everything was all good i turned on the pc (which started normally) but there are certain programs that will not work. Word, Internet Explorer, and a media player cannot seem to find their files (which are there). Also my firewall will not turn on automatically. I can get my Microsoft firewall on manually but my One Care firewall will not turn on at all. I've tried to reinstall or repair all the programs that are affected but there is always an error half way through which cancels the fix. As long as i can access my personal files and get those off i think i might just switch back to XP. what is your input on this? also, i liked the Media Center. does that come with XP Pro or do i have to specifically get XP Media Edition?

Look at the bright side XP takes up less resources then Vista and 2gb of ram on XP is plenty good, Xp is optimal at 1gb of ram. Plus XP Will be supported by Microsoft until the end of 2009. So you don't have to worry about MS canceling support for it anytime soon. XP Pro does not come with Media Center but Nero 7 Ultra Edition is damn near close to what Mdeia Center does. Slap in XP Pro downlaod Nero 7 Ultra Edition, then click on Nero Home and you will see that Media Center and Nero Home do pretty much the same thing.