I'm working on an Acer 5735-4082 laptop. I diagnosed a bad HD, bought a new one (HITACHI Travelstar 5K320 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s - Bare Drive), and installed Vista from a retail disc using the license key from the sticker on the bottom of the laptop. Vista installed on the new HD, was fully usable, but couldn't be activated (retail disc and OEM license key). I ordered recovery discs from Acer and that's when the fun began...
The install process (using the Acer recovery discs) starts normally, but after at least one restart and some Vista splash screens, it hangs with following error message: "The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows, click "OK" to restart the computer, and then restart the installation." Clicking on OK begins a loop in which every restart comes back to the same error message.
I've reinstalled using the Acer recovery discs at least five times (a stock install using the recovery discs, using an Acer format disc and then the Acer recovery discs, a different set of Acer recovery discs, etc.) and it encounters the same error after every install.
Thoughts?