Vista install fails after a while

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Guest

Apologize if this has been addressed, but I did not find my exact problem. I
have a Windows Beta 2 Vista install disk from Microsoft and have tried to
install from it 3 times without success.

I put in a new SATA2 250-gb drive just for Vista and chose it for the
installation rather than do an upgrade to XP. I have XP Pro on my C: drive
(IDE). Installation seems to go normally through Copying Files, but
somewhere after 30 minutes-plus (I have not sat here and watched it), the
instllation quits and XP loads. The first time I had a message that Vista
failed to install, but there were no details. The other two times, no
message, just boot to XP.

Windows' advisor says my machine is ready for all Vista tasks except TV
capture and viewing, which I do not do anyway.

Anyone seen the same problem I have?

Thanks in advance!
--
Jimmy Parsons
Asus P5GD1 m/b
P-4 2.8-ghz
1-gb RAM
Sapphire ATI Radeon X300 PCI-E video
 
I put in a new SATA2 250-gb drive just for Vista and chose it for the
installation rather than do an upgrade to XP. I have XP Pro on my C: drive
(IDE). Installation seems to go normally through Copying Files, but
somewhere after 30 minutes-plus (I have not sat here and watched it), the
instllation quits and XP loads. The first time I had a message that Vista
failed to install, but there were no details. The other two times, no
message, just boot to XP.
Click to expand...

Check in your BIOS setup that your SATA drive is set up to emulate PATA
interface.
 
Are you loading the drivers for your SATA controller at the appropriate
time?
 
Thanks, George and Mark, for suggestions.

I went to Setup and set the SATA to emulate PATA. I did not load the SATA
controller drivers, but the SATA drive appears to be working fine. (Don't
know if that's sufficient or not.)

I went back to the beginning on installing Vista, doing so this time from
the DVD drive as a boot drive. Previously I had tried to install while XP was
running. This time the installation seemed to be faster and complete. But as
it got to the end, past all the steps including "Completing installation," I
got the message "Installation cannot be completed. Please start over and
attempt to install again." Doing so brings me quickly to that same message
again.

The computer now offers a dual-boot option, for "Windows" or "earlier
version of Windows." The D: drive (SATA2 on which Vista is loaded) contains
about 8 GB of files.

Still not all the way there, though, with the Vista install.
 
Problem solved! Finally got Vista up and running.

Problem was, as Mark suggested, that I needed the SATA drivers for the hard
drive.

Western Digital's website listed no drivers for Vista, but I noticed someone
had said use the XP drivers. That's what I did, and it worked fine.

Thanks for the help.
 
I know this was a while ago but i 'm hoping you remember exactlly how you got
it to work. I have the exact same problem with I'm pretty sure the same
harddrive SATA\WDC_WD2500KS-00MJB0 - 250GB my video card is similar Radeon
X1300 (512 MB). i am ready to pull my hair out caquse i have tried everything
(including
SATA drivers(the ones from my motherboard disk).
please help if you can!!!!!
 
Rudy,

Hope I can help.... But I do not recall exactly where I got the XP drivers.
It might have been online, because I don't remember getting out my XP
install disk. Wherever the driver file was, I put it where I could get to it
easily during the installation process.

During the early part of Vista installation, a prompt came up asking if I
needed to add drivers. That's where I specified yes and indicated the driver
file. The installation went through completely after that, contrary to every
earlier try.

Sorry I'm so fuzzy on the details. Write again if this doesn't work, and
write especially if it does.

JP
 
Rudy,

Did you see the prompt to load drivers? Don't know if I made it clear -- I
installed from the Vista DVD. And I did install Vista to the new SATA drive,
having first set it as the boot drive in BIOS.

For what it's worth (probably not much right now), when I now boot to
Windows XP, the drive with that operating system is the C: drive. When I
boot to Vista, the drive it's on becomes the C: drive. The other, in each
case, is identified as the D: drive. It's handy to make sure you can
identify which drive is which. I noticed others name those drives so they
can identify them.

Jimmy
 
When you boot with the dvd and start Setup you get the BIOS enumeration
order for the drives. If you start Setup from a Windows desktop Vista Setup
will use the enumeration in use already and you see consistent drive
lettering from both OSes afterwards.
 
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