Fresh Windows install

I decided to put Windows 7 on my laptop. I had an RTM key and iso left, so I thought I'd just install SP1 afterwards. The OS installation completed without a hiccup, installed Steam and Guild Wars 2, got the mess of updates prior to SP1 and did a quick test to see how well Guild Wars 2 would run (it ran alright on low/med). Curiosity satisfied, I installed Service Pack 1 and things went downhill.

After SP1 installed, Guild Wars 2 and every game I installed on the machine instantly crashed with either StackHash, d3d9.dll, or nvd3dum.dll (something like that) as the culprit. The first seemed to have to do with DEP, but everytime I selected a program to exclude I got a "You can't do that" message. The second led me to running Microsoft's DirectX web installer, no dice. The third resulted in trying 2 legacy video drivers, still crashed. I managed to get the Guild Wars 2 launcher running after deleting it's .dat file, but I reloaded a fully downloaded copy and that broke it all over again.

I poked around a bit and found that installing Service Pack 1 can cause this and that there was a hotfix for it. A couple links later, I found the hotfix only to be hit with a "You need to validate" message. Fine. No problem. I'm running legitimate copies of Windows 7, so this should only take a second. Uh...no.

Because I was using Firefox, Microsoft's site started a download for the Genuine Advantage Validation tool. Quick download, but upon executing it, it said it was no longer supported and I should check my system clock. After confirming my clock time across multiple devices, I decided to give Internet Explorer 64bit a run. This resulted in an ActiveX popup to install the validation tool that, after allowing the download, failed to download without any error messages. It just didn't work. Fine. IE 32bit then. That worked, but the website said I already had the update installed.

This left me with a couple options: Use a Windows SP1 disk and reformat or continue fiddling. I went with the former. So, now I've formatted the partition and fully updated the new installation. I've spammed restore points and I am now getting ready to install a game on it. Here goes nothing.