[Flint]

I'm worried something might be wrong. Here's the story.

I just built my first PC. Gigabygte GA-EP35-DS3R mobo, 4 gb of RAM, WD 640GB hard drive. I'm trying to install Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

It gets past the "Copying Windows files" step in like 3 seconds.. but then it gets to "Expanding files" and its a whole different story. Right now it has been sitting at this step, on 6% complete for about 20 minutes now! It seems to be running fine because the "..." is animated and if I click the red X to close the window, it responds fine asking me if I want to cancel. This tells me nothing is frozen.

Prior to this, I had two other failed attempts at installing Vista. The first time got past 50% on this step before giving me a blue screen Stop error message. The second time ended up giving me a different Stop message.

Since it is my first build, I am concerned I may have done something wrong. One thing I notice is, on the previous screen when it asks me where I want to install Windows, it shows my hard drive as only having like 590-something GB, even though it's supposed to be 640 GB. Could this be related?

Also.. I have read that Vista has "issues" during Installation if you have more than 2-3 GB of RAM, even though 64-bit is supposed to be compatible with more.

Any advice? If there's something I need to change or fix, i'd rather find out now and do it before I wait several hours to see this go up 1% before giving me another BSOD.