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When I tried the flat installation from the other partition the error happened immediately. I can't remember the exact error. I had an eye exam that day and the doctor asked why I looked so tired and out of it. I told him I'ld spent hours on the computer trying to install Vista various ways. He pointed out that Vista may look prettier but it runs slower and it has all kinds of annoying questions. i.e. Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you're sure? etc. After that I decided I'ld rather not waste my vision on something that takes twice as long to start-up. I installed VistaStartMenu (free), copied a wallpaper from Vista, and changed my desktop appearance to the silver setting. Now it looks and feels almost as cool as Vista but without all the annoying pop-ups

Let me start by saying that I know Vista will run on my Dell Dimension 2400 desktop I've had Vista installed before but I did a clean installation. Now I want to upgrade from a new clean XP SP2 installation that I've added some software to that wouldn't install on Vista. I get zero compatibility issues but the installation quits after gathering files. I get the error: Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. I searched online and found the following info from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930984#appliesto It appears that maybe the problem is with my MSI combo drive (X52). I got the firmware for the drive and flashed it. The drive is secondary slave and I had it installed by a computer shop. The original CD-RW drive is set up as secondary master. I tried to upgrade again but still got the same error at the same point in the installation Checking compatibility (ok no problems) Copying Windows files (ok) Gathering files (ok) Expanding files(No way Jose) Microsoft says to use a flat installation as a workaround. I don't have an extra hard drive so I tried using the other partition on my hard drive without success. I also tried using my iPod like an external hard drive but I couldn't run the Setup.exe from either of these. I tried to upgrade from the DVD again and now I get a new error code: Windows cannot copy files required for installation. Network problems may be preventing Windows from accessing the files. Make sure the computer is connected to the network and restart the installation. Error Code: 0x80070005 I deleted some the Uprgade folder created by the Vista Upgrade disk and tried to install again from the DVD This time I got the first error again. What should I do now? It looks like I really need some other installation method. I can't figure out why though. I could try installing over a network from my laptop that has Vista running on it already. I could try switching the problematic combo drive to Secondary Master and flashing the drive again with firmware. Any other suggestions? I've used eventvwr.exe I found one event that seems to come up around the time of the installation Source: MSDTC Category: TM Type: information basically it just says that MSDTC started and the settings it started with. No real help. PS Windows Upgrade Advisor doesn't work for some reason even though I have the latest version.