Here are the symptoms:
- You have 4 GB of RAM (or rather, more than 3 GB).
- You are trying to install the 64-bit version of Windows Vista.
- After the first reboot, when your computer boots off of the hard disk for the first time, Windows crashes with a BSOD with error code 0x0000007E.
- Whatever hardware swapping you do doesn’t seem to help; it still gives you the blue screen at every boot.
A friend ran into this issue earlier today. After some searching and digging through a lot of not very useful information, we found out that the solution is pretty simple.
- Remove 2 GB of RAM, or whatever it takes to only have 2 GB in the machine.
- Run the Vista install.
- Install the x64 version of the KB929777 hotfix from Microsoft.
- Put your RAM back in.
Note that this particular issue should not occur if you are using a Windows Vista SP1 (or newer) install disc, it is only an issue with the RTM version.
Hope this helps someone. 