Can't even boot basic hdd util

Got an Acer Extensa 503T that my cousin asked me to look at. He's complaining of recurring registry errors etc. So, figuring it was memory, I ran a burn in test and everything passed as OK.

So I went and downloaded the latest ontrack drive utility to identify the hdd type and run diags on it. After creating the disk and porting it over to this POS, it won't even boot the program ... gets to a specific point during extraction and hangs ... tried swapping out the memory and no dice. recreated util onto another disk and even redownloaded it just in case. The disk works fine in numerous systems.

oh yeah, before all this, I figured I'd do a clean install and upon launching setup from the hdd, it gives a can not extract from .CAB error while looking for installed components.

any ideas anyone? :confused: