After numerous Install, still crashing

I ran WipeDrive and tried to install Windows 7 on a totally empty hard drive. It won't complete. It appears the memory's okay. Since I was unable to install anything more on the machine I was never able to test the hard drive, though I kind of think WipeDrive would have flagged me if there was an issue there. So, what's left, the motherboard or the cpu?

I've got to get a desktop running again, what's my best bet, to replace the mobo or the cpu or both? If it's a bios problem is there any way to deal with that at this point? Does bios live on the motherboard or the cpu?

I went to the gateway site to look for a bios upgrade. My search took me to a page that was giving me instructions on how to download to a floppy. There is no floppy drive on my machine. So i take it either there is no bios upgrade available, or my machine just isn't supported.

From all that's been discussed here, is there a chance I could get a working machine by just replacing the motherboard? Or just the cpu? Any other suggestions?

Hi, what is your motherboard.

Hi go Here and it will check your machine for missing drivers, in case you are missing some.
Here Follow the instructions, and when it does it's scan, press the green button, bottom
left of picture and install whatever it has for you, this might help with your problem.

keress said:

I went to the gateway site to look for a bios upgrade. My search took me to a page that was giving me instructions on how to download to a floppy. There is no floppy drive on my machine. So i take it either there is no bios upgrade available, or my machine just isn't supported.

From all that's been discussed here, is there a chance I could get a working machine by just replacing the motherboard? Or just the cpu? Any other suggestions?

possibly with a flash drive on usb ?

If you can't get that working then install vista again but dont register it then update the bios then attempt the format with windows 7 ?

It doesn't look like anything is going to install on this machine again. It's been going downhill all week. Only the simplest program would install. What hardware could be failing that would cause an inability to install anything?

Are you saying I could load a bios upgrade onto a flash drive? I would think that if the problem was a downlevel bios it would be cut and dry drop in functionality, not a slow deterioration like I've been seeing.

keress said:

It doesn't look like anything is going to install on this machine again. It's been going downhill all week. Only the simplest program would install. What hardware could be failing that would cause an inability to install anything?

Are you saying I could load a bios upgrade onto a flash drive? I would think that if the problem was a downlevel bios it would be cut and dry drop in functionality, not a slow deterioration like I've been seeing.

why do you say nothing will install , please explain the symptoms exactly ?

what is the make model and rating of your power supply ?

Well, I've done a lot since last week to get this machine going, and I'm back at square one.

I reformatted my drive and tried to install windows7. It wouldn't install. Fooling with this is impacting my productivity/income so I decided to spend some on new components that would rule out problems. There were suggestions about updating the bios, but my mobo is no longer supported, nothing's available, so I decided to buy a new motherboard and installed it. The new board warned me about power surge problems. I had a new power supply on hand, so I installed that. I was finally able to install Windows 7. Several other programs also installed fine. I figured I'd gotten to the root of my problems -- a faulty power supply.

I tried installing Adobe CS3. At first it hung midway as before. I installed it on another machine to verify it wasn't the DVD that was bad, and it installed fine there. Then I thought, maybe the DVD is marginal and my drive on the broken machine can't read it so I created a dub.

Further attempts to install it are getting a BSOD.

I just tried rebooting and got a BSOD right away.

I'm in safe mode and was able to copy the minidumps. They are attached.

The only hardware that remain untested is the cpu and the hard drive.

One detail I hadn't thought of earlier is that, about a month ago, I spilled water on my keyboard. It shorted. My system crashed. I did a system restore and everything seemed fine, except for the keyboard, which I replaced.

Any help is much appreciated.