Specs: Gigabyte P55M-UD2 motherboard Caviar Blue 640GB HDD 2x2GB Corair 1333MHz Desktop Memory Intel i5 750 processor Edimax 802.11g Wireless PCI card nVidia 7950GT video card The problem first occurred during installation of W7, at the first restart (i.e. the first point which it boots from the HDD instead of disc) My PC simply restarted as if the reset button had been hit upon starting the next stage of installation. Upon bootup I chose the "Start Windows Normally" option and the same thing happened game. This time I chose "Safe Mode" and it successfully booted but said that installation could not complete during safe mode. So this I manually restarted it automatically went to normal windows mode and successfully installed. All seemed fine (I installed all necessary drivers) but today the same thing happened on bootup and the same thing solved it. No memory dump was made. I'd like to point that I built this computer myself, and it was my first time doing so, so I may have screwed up something. Any help would be much appreciated.

I would recommend checking your hardware. Check the tempratures for you cpu (you can do that in BIOS or download a third paty application like "speedfan" to do this). You might have not installed the heatsink correctly! Check your memory ( Click the Windows 7 Start button, type memory, and click on Windows Memory Diagnostic, When the Windows Memory Diagnostic screen loads, click Restart now and check for problems). It might be that one of the RAM modules is defective! Doublecheck the power requirements of your components and the power supply installed. Also check whether all needed secondary power plugs (on the motherboard and graphics card) are plugged in. It might be that one or more components do not get enogh power to work stable.MCSA/MCTS/MCP

According to Speedfan my CPU temperature hovers around 30-35C which I don't think is too high. According to Windows Memory Diagnostic there were no problems. As for the cables, everything seems to be plugged in and I cannot find anything else to plug in. Could this be a problem with the front panel connectors? As they were the thing I was most unsure about when I built the computer.

Indeed, these values seem pretty good. In my opinion the chance this is due the front panel connectors is very small. Even if you connected them completely wrong, this would rather lead to a different kind of issues. Of course, It doesn't hurt double chekcing this! The whole point is that on new, modern hardware Windows should at least install without troubles. That the installation crashes is very probable due to some serious misconfiguration, or some hardware malfunction. First suspect are disk, RAM, cpu and power I would recommend double (or triple) check all connectors, read the hardware manuals for things you might have missed and install Windows with the least hardware possible (leave out your wireless card, one bar of RAM, for example). By excluding (and even replacing) hardware, you possibly can trace the faulty component. You can check your disk for errors. Also do not forget about 7's built in tools for troubleshooting. Go to the action center to see solutions for issues your computer recently encountered. MCSA/MCTS/MCP

Hm, could the PSU be too weak? What powersupply do you have? It doesn't look like it should be an issue - I never heard the GeForce 7950 would be very hungry by today's standards - but, well, you never know. If you have the chance to disable Intel's Turbo-thing through BIOS, try that and see if it helps.

I got a OCZ StealthXStream 600W, which I think would be more than powerful enough for my rig. According to my mobo manual there are two types of SATA slots: GSATA and SATA, the former being controlled by "GIGABYTE SATA 2" and the latter by "P55 chipset". My HDD is in a SATA slot, could that affect anything? Also the first time I booted I was asked whether to run in AHCI mode or continue in IDE mode; unsure, I chose IDE. Finally I noticed in the mobo manual it said "For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express Graphics Card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot" and now realised I put my card in the PCIEX4 slot. Could that cause this problem? Once again thank you for your help.

Hi w7guy, Does it work normally after change the display card slot? If it does not work, please also try to update the BIOS and reset the BIOS to default. You may also test the issue in Safe Mode. Regards,Arthur Li - MSFT