Random freezing during windows 10 install?

[Zumbuh]

So I recently cleaned out my laptop, just generally got rid of dust and replaced any thermal paste and such. Once I closed it up, I booted up my laptop to check my temperatures. It then froze at the Windows 7 boot logo and when I restarted my laptop, it had a winload.exe missing error. Obviously odd but I couldn't get it back into W7, so I just downloaded Windows 10 onto a USB Stick and booted from it. Now, it randomly freezes during install. Sometimes it's at the W10 logo, sometimes it's when I'm selecting the partition to install to, but I have not gotten through the installer without a lock-up. So, I'm kinda stuck. What could be causing my issue?

and please, if you're going to respond to this, actually try to help and don't be a dick. I already asked this on other places and pretty much the only response I get is that I fucking suck at cleaning out my laptop. I've done this plenty of times, pretty much every month but this time I have an issue. I don't even know if it's related, I just happened to do that right before this problem.

[Doramius]

What type of drive is it?  It sounds like a weird coincidence, but the effects you're getting fall into the category of a possibly failing hard drive.  Have you tried running a scan on the drive with another computer, or checked if you're having troubles and stalls accessing the drive while connected to another system?

[Zumbuh]

43 minutes ago, Doramius said:

What type of drive is it?  It sounds like a weird coincidence, but the effects you're getting fall into the category of a possibly failing hard drive.  Have you tried running a scan on the drive with another computer, or checked if you're having troubles and stalls accessing the drive while connected to another system?

Relatively old drive, 5400RPM 120GB IDE hard drive. I have no troubles hooking it up to my dad's laptop, also the setup freezes when the hard drive isn't even in the system. Also I tried it with my dad's hard drive in the system and it freezes still.

[Doramius]

If the system is freezing with various Hard drives, then it sounds like you may need to remove heatsinks and replace thermal paste.

[Zumbuh]

18 minutes ago, Doramius said:

If the system is freezing with various Hard drives, then it sounds like you may need to remove heatsinks and replace thermal paste.

I've actually done that like, 4 times.. hasn't worked.

[Doramius]

Your final options are to swap out the RAM, and check for bad capacitors or something that may have shorted out a point on your mainboard.  Outside of that, it's your CPU.  

 

You could go longshot and try a different PSU.

[Zumbuh]

2 minutes ago, Doramius said:

Your final options are to swap out the RAM, and check for bad capacitors or something that may have shorted out a point on your mainboard.  Outside of that, it's your CPU.  

 

You could go longshot and try a different PSU.

Running on battery power, I'll be able to check the ram in a couple days.

[Zumbuh]

I havent been able to check the ram yet but I noticed that Windows XP could install but it gives me 0x0000007B bsod, but that was also the same error code for winload.exe on W7. huh.

[Doramius]

0x0000007B is a device driver issue.  Do you have another Hard drive you can try and see if Windows installs?  Also run a SMART and sector scan on the current hard drive.  You may have a failing drive.

[Zumbuh]

42 minutes ago, Doramius said:

0x0000007B is a device driver issue.  Do you have another Hard drive you can try and see if Windows installs?  Also run a SMART and sector scan on the current hard drive.  You may have a failing drive.

It will install if I put that hard drive in another computer.

[Zumbuh]

On 3/1/2017 at 5:09 PM, Doramius said:

0x0000007B is a device driver issue.  Do you have another Hard drive you can try and see if Windows installs?  Also run a SMART and sector scan on the current hard drive.  You may have a failing drive.

Okay, I just got a new shipment for replacement ram. It fixed it. Thanks. Windows is now reinstalled, don't know what coulda broken the ram however.. I didn't really touch it.