Windows 7: Restored to factory defaults, still locking up

I restored my friend's HP Vista desktop to factory defaults. When I attempted the first round of 91 Windows Updates, 50 of them came back as Failed to Install. I thought maybe the Recovery went bad, so I re-did the recovery to factory defaults. I was able to install half of the updates, (I decided to do half at a time), but now it is locking up at random times. I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostics, found no errors. I ran chkdsk /r from a command prompt, it found no errors. Any ideas where to look next? I'm thinking to open it up and look for swelled up capacitors.

Thanks

Check for temperatures and yep you should check the capacitors as well . . .
Is it showing blue screens ?????????

I would do a real Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7, just because i don't trust recovery partitions (for a bunch of good reasons).

I checked the caps, they all seem fine. I'll wait til it runs for a while and look into the temperatures.

No blue screens. It locked up once when it was rebooting froze on the "Configuring Updates" screen- not sure if it was shutdown or boot up. Then another freeze when I went to shutdown by pressing Alt-F4. It froze on the shutdown screen.

I've just reseated the RAM to see if that helps.

Thanks

Well no blue screens ! I think its the gpu then ..............

Depending upon how much bloatware comes with your model, Recovery is normally a pretty corrupted reinstall. Try these steps to Clean Up Factory Bloatware to see if it helps or you can pinpoint the corruption or problem.

I would follow the steps Bob linked above to get a perfect Clean Reinstall using the official Vista installer which can be compiled as shown here: Vista ISO download

I got it going now. I did a clean reinstall from the downloaded Vista iso, and it no longer froze up.

But when I loaded the graphics driver for the GeForce, it would unload it on its own, and device manager had a message that Windows disabled the device because there were problems. Tried various things, could not get a driver loaded. I finally replaced the graphics card, now all is fine. Kudos to beret21 for suggesting that early on in this thread.

And the system is much peppier with the clean install than it was with the bloated factory default install, as gregrocker always says. Thanks to all.

By the way, I did not load any drivers from the HP website for this Pavilion a6250t. Device manager was not showing any issues. Do I need to load the chipset drivers, etc? It's running so well, I tend to want to leave it be.

Thanks

If there are no performance issues I would not change any drivers. Windows 7 tends to be the authority on what drivers it needs unlike previous Windows.

Stick with the tools and methods in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to maintain a perfect install.

OK good. Thanks

While Windows 7's generic wirless and ethernet drivers are pretty good, they don't offer advanced features like allowing you to create an ad-hoc network to share an internet connection (i.e. turning your computer with a wireless card in a short-range wifi hotspot) or using bridging to connect multiple networks your computer is connected to (if you have multiple network cards).

If you want such features, go look for drivers for your ethernet and wireless card.
But most users rarely need this.