Vista installation stops during "finalize installation"

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I had a massive problem installing Vista on a PC running Windows XP.
The first installation target was an USB hard drive. OK: Now I know that
Vista is not "USB enabled". That's a pitty but it's still a beta and may be
it will work someday.
The second target was a different hard disk (NTFS) in the very same PC. This
worked till the point "finalize setup". After 12 hours of waiting I restarted
the PC. It went directly into a rollback. I tested it three times. Even
pressing F8 and choosing one of the option ("save mode") didn't do the trick
(also rollback). Booting into the old operating system also made a "rollback".
So I did an installation via XP and after it stopped ad "finalize
installation" I rebooted the PC using the DVD. This gave me the opportunity
to "repair" the boot record so that the option "Vista (recovered)" was
visible and I was able to finish the installation process. This was very
annoying. Anyone here that had also problems with a stop of the installation
during "finalize installation" but has a better idea what to do?
 
Hey Jancsi,

I had the same problem here (i.e. successfully running XP sp2 and freezing
during the same stage installing Beta 2 and build 5472)

My 'fix' for Beta 2 was to stick Ice Bricks underneath the CPU of my laptop.
Unfortunately that wasn't enough for 5472, and for that install I had to put
Ice Bricks underneath the CPU as well as on top of the Keyboards.

Voila!!!!

It seems (at least that's my uneducated guess) that my system is overheating
during the finalizing phase and just halts.

I wish there was a better recovery process (instead of restarting from the
very beginning.) During the next install I'm wondering how much cooler I can
get the thing. It is currently Winter in Australia so I might have to do the
install at night and take the laptop into the outside shed to do the
install.

What Beta testers have to go through ... ha ha ha. No pain, no gain.

ciao,


Sam T.
 
Jancsi--

You might want to look this over from Tom Archer's blog.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/

Why can't I install Windows on my USB drive?
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/04/15/113811.aspx


Also you might want to read some adventures trying.
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=54659&page=2

I'm not sure what people have done to mod removable USB hard drives to
install Vista if they've been successful. Here's a method for XP
installation on a flash drive. I know the security aspect is why they
discourage installation on removable drives. It's very obvious that some of
the methods below for XP would allow number of utilities that can grab
passwords and extract sensitive information from your OS installation
(specifically windows) in milliseconds without any on-screen notice. With
autoplay enabled, by the time you hear that familiar something is connected
"ding-dong", all your personal passwords have been copied to the USB drive.

Booting XP on USB removable drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in_your_pocket/index.html

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

?
spoofnozzle wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------
?http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in_your_pocket/index.html



http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/04/15/113811.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2576431

www.wdc.com/en/library/usb/2079-001050.pdf

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20983648.html

http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs/windows_OS_installation.asp

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

____________

It is interesting that you were resourceful enough to overcome this
problem--I take from this you got Vista running, but I'd like to know what
caused it since if Vista is up we can't blame the burn.

CH
 
Booting from usb will not be possible in Vista but MS is looking at it for a
future version of Windows. There is a lot of activity these days around
finishing the standards for usb booting. Until this is done MS will leave
the project on hold.
 
Yepp. That's what I read and that's while I wrote "may be it will work
someday". Hopefully the standardization process will not take that long so
Microsoft is able to put this feature into this operating system.
 
Sorry: I wanted to say, that I was not able to install it on my USB drive
(the reasons that are also discussed in many of the links that you have
stated. So I took a second hard disk which was not USB but IDE (that's what I
missed to write I think) and did the installation on that.
But you just triggered a idea, that I may test: In one of the many sites I
visited because of my "USB problem", someone wrote, that he installed XP on
an IDE drive, started it, disabled the page file (on the same drive?) and
then copied that whole installation onto an USB drive. Could be worth a test,
couldn't it?
 
Hmm... On one of my first tries I did a memory check and that definitliy
overheated the CPU and the system started beeping. I found that the
motherboard and CPU where overclocked and turned it back to "default".
Afterwards I had no problems with heat anymore. I would assume that in my
case heat is not the reason for the failure (but you should never say never).
Normaly the system will beeping as soon as it is too warm. But may be Vista
turns this signal off. I'm really not sure.
 
Nothing to lose. The links as you see, did get XP installed on USB
removables but I coudln't find evidence of this accomplished in any
workaround with Vista.

I have a feeling that some of the MSFT people have been able to get this
done, but whatever mods they have at their disposal to do it (hdw or
software) I'm not sure.

CH
 
The standards group is glacially moving along. I prefer booting from
external SATA drives anyway since the throughput is orders of magnitude
faster.
 
On my laptop, the freezing (presumably to prevent system failures due to
overheating) haven't beeped in a long time.

I'm not sure if this is a feature (as it did the same thing under WinXP) or
something that has happened since the last firmware upgrade. Unfortunately I
don't think I can downgrade my BIOS so have to live with it.

Your ACPI support probably works better than my laptop.

But whatever works for you,

Sam T.
 
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