I'm not certain where to put this... I've chosen here because I think I've done enough swapping for the problem to be focused on the MB/CPU.
Build is a new i7 920 in an Asus P6T Deluxe V2. 12GB Corsair RAM. Some older components: Radeon 4850, a 150GB Raptor (sata), and a 750W Corsair inside a Coolermaster Sniper case. Setup has gone very smoothly, all hardware functions test out.
Then I put in an OS disk (tried Vista-32 retail, Vista-64 retail, W7 7068 64), it boots fine off CD, then seemingly just freezes at that first desktop background screen before it pops up the dialog asking you to select a language before proceeding with install. The wait is around 10 minutes. Once I do so, it gets stuck for another 20 minutes (hourglass cursor again) before bringing up the actual installer screen where you format partitions, choose upgrade/advanced, and do the install. Once the install starts it's extremely smooth, no problems whatsoever. But at the start of the install is close to 30 minutes of waiting.
Thought maybe it was multiple drives... switched the raptor to a 1TB WD GP drive, nope.
Thought maybe it's a quirk of 12GB of RAM.... methodically went all the way down to a single 2GB stick, didn't help.
Thought maybe it was OC settings or something, reset to default, nope.
Thought maybe it was disk configuration... tried IDE, tried AHCI, tried RAID... nothing.
Thought it was a BIOS issue... upgraded to the latest March '09 BIOS off Asus's horribly unresponsive-and-prone-to-become-unavailable website (a harder tasking than assembling the computer, that's for sure) but nope.
Any idea what's going on, or suggestions for things to try? I did a good deal of searching and all I found were glowing reports of smooth Vista and W7 installs on this platform. Indeed it works well once I've gotten it up and running, but the initial install seems to hang something up and that has me concerned.
Build is a new i7 920 in an Asus P6T Deluxe V2. 12GB Corsair RAM. Some older components: Radeon 4850, a 150GB Raptor (sata), and a 750W Corsair inside a Coolermaster Sniper case. Setup has gone very smoothly, all hardware functions test out.
Then I put in an OS disk (tried Vista-32 retail, Vista-64 retail, W7 7068 64), it boots fine off CD, then seemingly just freezes at that first desktop background screen before it pops up the dialog asking you to select a language before proceeding with install. The wait is around 10 minutes. Once I do so, it gets stuck for another 20 minutes (hourglass cursor again) before bringing up the actual installer screen where you format partitions, choose upgrade/advanced, and do the install. Once the install starts it's extremely smooth, no problems whatsoever. But at the start of the install is close to 30 minutes of waiting.
Thought maybe it was multiple drives... switched the raptor to a 1TB WD GP drive, nope.
Thought maybe it's a quirk of 12GB of RAM.... methodically went all the way down to a single 2GB stick, didn't help.
Thought maybe it was OC settings or something, reset to default, nope.
Thought maybe it was disk configuration... tried IDE, tried AHCI, tried RAID... nothing.
Thought it was a BIOS issue... upgraded to the latest March '09 BIOS off Asus's horribly unresponsive-and-prone-to-become-unavailable website (a harder tasking than assembling the computer, that's for sure) but nope.
Any idea what's going on, or suggestions for things to try? I did a good deal of searching and all I found were glowing reports of smooth Vista and W7 installs on this platform. Indeed it works well once I've gotten it up and running, but the initial install seems to hang something up and that has me concerned.