Problems installing software under win7 64bit

Hi

A friend of mine is faced with an odd issue that I have not been able to quite figure out.
He is running a custom built system, I5 CPU, 8gb DDR3, high end components in general.
We installed Windows 7 Ultimatex64 on it and made a system image of it.
Then installed a few programs. Initially everything was fine.

After a few days[weeks?] of usage it would not install any software. The installer would run and it would appear to be installing but at some point the install would fail before completion. I tried moving the files from the DVD to the HDD which worked fine. I then tried the install from the HDD which again started installing and looked ok but failed before it completed. Unfortunately I can not remember the message that popped up on the failure.

Anyway I brought the system here, restored the system image and installed the software without a hitch.
He took the system home and tried to install another game and ran into the same issue again. At some point after taking it home he also created another system image and then restored that image once he had the failure on an install but after restoring that image the problem still persisted. He has been unable to install any software of any size [not sure about small programs] nor has he been able to update his game [1gb update] There is plenty of space on the drives, DVD is working fine, system is stable and works fine aside from the installer issues.

At one point someone had suggested that it could be power supply related but I never managed to get my hands on the system to test the power supply. In any case that was over a year ago. The system is still stable, no failures but not able to install new software.

My friend is going to be bringing the PC to my house in the next couple of weeks so I can try to get to the bottom of this strange issue. I have a Win7x64 PC here with all the same stuff on it and never had any issues at all. Mine is an AMD but I doubt that would be a factor here.

So does any one have any ideas what might cause this behavior, what I should check when I get the PC here, what I may be able to do to resolve it?

Some programs create an install log.
Search [C] for *.log and see if you can find any install logs, maybe an error message there ?

I would also check Event Viewer to see if there are any errors that might help identify the problem.

Gornot said:

See if turning UAC off does anything.
Is he logged into an admin account?
Is his system up to date in WU? What about device drivers?
Perhaps an A/V is blocking installers? Firewall?

1:I don't think I tried that but it couldn't hurt
2:Yes he is using the initial account that I created which has admin access
3:I don't know if it is now or not but it was when the problem began. Not sure if he can even install the updates now.
4: I don't think so. The installers run without issue and they appear as if they are going to work but then they will get to 60-75% complete and throw an error.

Some programs create an install log.
Search [C] for *.log and see if you can find any install logs, maybe an error message there ?

I would also check Event Viewer to see if there are any errors that might help identify the problem.

That sounds like it may help to shed some light. I will have a look when I get the system here.

The whole thing seems rather strange to me. I have had many systems with all sorts of OS installed and have never saw anything like this before.

Thanks for the suggestions, hopefully I will be able to get to the bottom of this soon.

You could also look in Installed Programs.
See if the owner installed any System Optimizers, Registry Cleaners, etc.

If none of that helps, try to install a program such as Macrium Reflect free, that creates an install log for me.