Hello everyone,

My friend asked me to format his laptop for him (since he has no idea how to do so). When I go into the Vista setup, I am able to delete the partitions and format the hard drive so it is clean, however when I try to install Vista back onto the hard drive, I get to Expanding Files and it stays at 0% for a few minutes, then it tells me "Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x8007045D". Once I got this error, I also tried running a Windows XP installation to see if that would work, and again I am able to format the hard drive, but when it gets to 8% installation (drivers.cab) it just freezes there. I am positive both CDs work because I just used the XP cd yesterday to format my laptop and the Vista CD the other day for my sisters. Could it be that my friends hard drive is corrupt? He did have some pretty serious viruses that almost prevented the computer from even being turned on, which is why he just wanted it formatted.

Any ideas? All help would be appreciated!

What is the exact make and model of the laptop?

Did you try running the Recovery from the Recovery Partition?