The last BIOS update for my board dates to the time I was building my PC, so hopefully it's up to date. I'll check tomorrow.

I'm letting windows handle the reformat so I guess it is quick. I have to format every time I try to install because it detects the fraction of the OS it did manage to install and says it needs to be deleted else it will shove it into a junk folder called 'old windows'. I don't want useless fragments of broken OSs littering my PC. NB: I'm having to launch the install by setting my BIOS to boot from CD first. It wouldn't install when I tried to do it from my XP desktop as mentioned in the instruction manual. I believe that's because I have 32bit XP and was using the 64bit install disc.

I have tried installing 32bit windows 7 to see if that could narrow the problems down. It did exactly the same thing.

I've checked my hardware on the compatibility site. It's ok.

I've read through a load of threads from that site, but not that linked one. Found a couple of things to try overall - RAM settings tweaks (currently on defaults) and so on, and that hypertransport thingy mentioned in your topic. Ejecting the CD is something simple to try too; someone said it worked for them.

:sigh: Why on earth should it be so difficult? I have standard hardware in a standard enough configuration, and I've never had any problems installing windows since 3.1. It's one of the few things I can hand on heart say it has always got right.