My daughter has a Dell Optiplex 745 with a dual core 3.2, 3 gigs of RAM and so forth. The hard drive died so I replaced it and reloaded Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1 included in the install.
After the install, it needed around 140 important updates. I let it download and install them. Strangely, around 14 of them failed. I don't recall anything like this happening before, so I started over again with another fresh install. Same thing happened. This still felt wrong so I used my image to burn a new DVD and installed Windows again. Same thing. This time, I tried to install the previously failed updates. Eventually I got some of them to install either via Windows Update or downloading them individually from Microsoft and manually installing them. I made some progress but of the remaining ones, I still had one that had almost meaningless errors (Code 800B0100, 8007000D, data is invalid, etc.).
Next, I swapped out the hard drive with another one. Everything I just described, happened with the next hard drive too.
Next, I went to Dell and tried to run their diagnostic. For one reason or another, I have not been successful. Either the diagnostic setup fails or Explorer gets an error or Firefox gets an error or whatever.
I'm thinking hardware at this point. I tried to do the memory test built into Windows. I was not watching it run but was not worried because it is supposed to list the results the next time you log in. When I returned to the computer later, Windows was at the login screen. When I logged in, no results.
This computer worked just fine before the hard drive died but I admit, it has been sitting around for a couple months waiting for me to replace the hard drive. During that entire time, it was sitting on my daughter's desk with the error on the screen so I guess something else could have failed while it was waiting for me.
Any ideas?