David said:
Good advice, thanks. I think the harddrives are OK, XP boots and I've
got stuff on other partitions that is accessible so I'm trying another
approach, I'm downloading the Vista 64 ISO from the ISDN and I'll burn
a DVD and try it. Of course, if the new DVD has the same failure I'm
probably going to have to examine the HDs but I can't imagine how that
could be the problem?
As far as other items, the same DVD that won't install now installed
some weeks back with the same soundcard (on board), Ethernet (on
board), and all the phrephrials connected that are connected now so
testing the HD is the most logical step IF the new DVD fails. If the
new DVD works then I guess I'll have to scrap the pretty green one the
MSDN sent me. <sigh>
One other thing worth mentioning, if the burned DVD fails, it could be a bad
download or bad burn but you probably know that. However, if there is a
hard drive issue, that can cause a bad burn because most DVD burning
programs will cache to the hard drive.
The advise about the peripherals has been SOP at least back through Windows
95 that if setup stops or stalls out, you should disconnect things. When
I've run into it, I do it one by one, remove a peripheral, restart setup,
etc. because I like to know precisely what item on which setup is choking.
As to it having worked a few weeks ago and not now, I've seen much stranger
things!<LOL> It is a puzzle; sometimes, it's a case of how we start setup,
did we boot to XP, place DVD in the drive and simply reboot the system or
did we boot to XP, place DVD in the drive, shutdwon and start setup from a
cold start. Sometimes, it's a case of what is turned on and what isn't.
For the sake of plug and play setup, conventional wisdom would seem to
dictate, turn on all your peripherals, let the OS find the appropriate
drivers and go from there. But, if you're like me, I'm sure you've run into
situations where, "Man, it SHOULD work, it worked last time, why not
now....and they say these are machines with relentless logic!"<LOL>
It's really hard to say. In your case, it's stopping on file copying and
that's one of the reasons I felt you should check the drive to be sure drive
integrity isn't impaired as that can play havoc with the process. Another
possibility might be the DVD drive, maybe it's having problems but I'm
pretty dubious that that is the issue.
One other thing, I'm assuming the XP partition is hidden and you are trying
to install Vista to a separate partition?