Built new system (first time BIY) and having troubles....please help!

I posted this over in the OS/Windows section but it could be hardware related...not sure. First time BIY...

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=3973408#post3973408

Thanks!

change your Boot options in BIOS to boot from CD and then run the install from there

That's what I did after I got the first message. And then windows setup starts to run but when it goes to start windows I get the blue "stop" message...

You get a bluescreen while loading windows setup, right? I have had a defective windows cd cause this before. I could be any number of things though, is anything overheating? Try with 1 stick of ram at a time. Also, take out everything you don't need, such as sound cards, extra hard drives, extra CD drives, and make sure you hard drive is on a seperate IDE cable.

Thanks Yuri.

I've tried all kinds of hard-drive configs...Master + slave, just master, just slave, etc. and that's not fixing it.

The only cards I haven't disabled were the video card (I don't have another PCI-E videocard) and the watercooling system card (was worried about running the CPU without cooling and going through the hassle of installing the heatsink).

I actually gave up and took it to my neighboorhood pc repair shop. Was a blow to my ego - wanted this to be completely BYI - but I just don't have enough gear to do enough swap outs and troubleshooting to find the problem, let alone another Windows CD....

Thanks to all those who posted, though. If they find the problem I'll post it here...

The guy spent all afternoon on it and couldn't figure it out. He thought it was BIOS then he thought it was bad RAM, now....

Looks liike I'm on my own again tomorrow. Anyone got any other ideas? Thanks.