I only wanted to install some software

Well that was three hours wasted. All I wanted to do was to install Photoshop. I'd go through the process of installing and after 30 seconds it would just stop - no error message or anything. I read the instructions (yes it got to that stage!) and had several re-starts - well you can never be too sure! Then I began to wonder perhaps I'd not got enough free space on my hard drive. I've noticed for awhile that the amount of free space keeps gradually going down. So I went off to investigate. Not being a "techie" sort I Googled it. Found something about shadow copy and how to check how much of your disk is assigned to this. Found it was over 7 gb!! It went onto explain how to reduce it but it failed to tell me what to reduce it to! Anyway yet another Google and I found the answer. I'd now got extra space on my hard drive so I tried again to install Photoshop. Same problem ... several more re-starts and still the same problem. So I tootled off to clean up my C drive. Crumbs how much rubbish is stored in temporary files ... so I did a spring clean on that and managed to free up another 5 gb! So now I was pretty sure the problem wasn't lack of free space!

So off again to my friend Google and this time I googled "problems installing Photoshop Vista!. Low and behold a thread came back with loads and loads of posts with people having the same issue (I'm glad I'm not alone). There in the midst was an "idiots" walk through as to what I needed to do (I'll post it at the end in case others are having similar problems). Once I'd followed the instructions I was able to install Photoshop!

I'd taken that long to actually install the software I'd lost interest in using it - well to be truthful 24 was about to start! So I suppose the moral of this story is Google exactly what your problem is and you'll probably find the answer quicker!

Anyway for those that want to check how much disk space your shadow copy is using - have a look here (this is written far better than the one I used) http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Shadow-Copy-on-Windows-Vista

and if you are having problems installing Photoshop on Vista try the following

On Windows Vista32:
1. Choose Start > All Programs > Accessories.
2. Right-click the Command icon, choose Run As Administrator, and authenticate.
3. Navigate to Windows\System32.
4. At the prompt, type regsvr32 jscript.dll and press Enter.
5. When a dialog box with the message "DllRegisterServer in jscript.dll succeeded" appears, click OK.