hiIn the past I have installed all the versions of windows on numerous machines from windows 3.1 (exluding millenium) until the present day.I installed the vista beta and rc and successfully the 7 beta.I have written software from the 80's until the present day using languages from z80 machine code through various visual basics and .net and delphi.I have designed and developed various pieces of hardware in the past and written the software for it.I HAVE NEVER COME ACROSS ANY THING AS BAD AS WINDOWS 7 RC FOR INSTALLATION.Look at the threads there are numerous about installaion inconsistancys and what are microsoft saying, "it will all be ok for rtm".Well thats not good enough. People cant test it if they cant install it. If being able to install it is part of the test then its failed. Its no good saying keep checking windows update if it dosn't get as far as installing. I say all this because they had it right in the beta, why oh why or what have you changed to make the rc worst. It is supposed to be a release candidate and its not as good as the beta.For what its worth my personal thoughts areIf it wont install, I cant test itIf I cant test it, I wont buy it and I wont recommend it.Before people say it installed ok for me, I know it did but a release candidate should be near perfect and it is not.malc

Malc - I sympathize and understand your position. And you're 100% right - an RC should be near perfect. And show stopper bugs like the installation thing shouldn't happen. But at the same time, I'd think that this IS the time and place to have these issues. I'd rather see them now, as prerelease software than later after the code's gone gold. Just for grins and giggles, a couple of people reported that if they were using the onboard graphics instead of an add-in video card, they were able to get through the installation process - where with the add-in card, they were having nothing but problems. Don't know if it's applicable to your particular situation - but it might be worth checking into. Way back in the Vista RC days, I seem to recall having a similar issue - turns out my motherboard needed a BIOS upgrade. After flashing the motherboard to what was then the latest rev, it fixed the video issues - and haven't seen any issues like it since.