Vista Ultimate Upgrade Freezes at "Completing Upgrade"

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I've recently purchased a brand new (no-OS) PC. I installed my legitimate
copy of Windows XP Home Edition (w/SP2) on it and it loaded everything
without a hitch. Once I started the upgrade process to Windows Vista Ultimate
with my legitimate Vista Ultimate Upgrade dvd, everything was going along
smoothly until after the second reboot. It came up to the "Upgrading
Windows....." screen with the check marks next to "Copying Windows files",
"Gathering files", "Expanding files", and "Installing features and upates".
In bold black letters it now reads "Completing Upgrade.." and it appears to
be completely locked up. Mouse won't move and I see no hard disk activity. I
tried this once earlier, and I know that if I reboot my machine, it'll come
up and tell me the installation failed and it'll roll my OS back to XP. Has
anyone else encountered this, and if so, what do I do?
 
I just tried it, and it still gets frozen up at exactly the same spot. Any
other suggestions to try?
 
I even tried copying the contents of the entire Vista Ultimate Upgrade dvd
into a file on my hard disk and trying the upgrade from there. Same thing.
The process gets hung at exactly the same place every time.
 
I had the same issue - turns out in my case my old Linksys wireless B PCI
card (WMP11) was incompatible and decided to take up 100% of CPU resources,
bringing the process to a crawl.

BTW, the only way I found this out was to let the install run - it
eventually finished... 48 hours later!Once I got rid of it from my system
things were back to normal.
 
Have you tried unplugging every USB device during the install?
Unplug any extra peripherals. Uninstall any AVs, firewalls, spyware
programs, any type of programs that monitor or write to the disk.
Close all programs- all programs sitting in the notification area/systray.
Do some disk cleanup, run chkdsk, and defrag.

Try again.

-Michael
 
I also use a Linksys wireless B PCI card. If I remove it and try the install
again, will I be able to put it back in once the install is complete and
still be able to use it with my machine?
 
I wish I could offer something more than 'misery-loves-company'; but I'm
experiencing the exact same thing. Some of the responses here don't apply
(let it run 48 hours, etc) as they don't understand: the system is locked,
not 'running at a crawl'. It's happening to me whether I do an upgrade or
clean install. Does the first reboot, the 'completing upgrade' goes for a
few minutes (with those 3 dots . . .) and then the dots stop, as does the
hard drive activity, keyboard response, etc.

I have a call open with MS Support -- today the guy had me pull up the
install log, but unfortunately as the system is locked, the log ends with
'phase 2 complete'; you and I are getting stuck in 'phase 3' -- for which
there are no entries in the log, apparently the lock-up prevents the log
from being updated with the exact info we need. He escalated the call to
the next level, hopefully there will be a resolution soon. I'll post the
info for you here if get anywhere.

I've tried everything -- removing all internal and external devices
(including my wireless card) -- disabling anything in BIOS that might cause
a problem as well as attempting a clean and upgrade install -- no luck.
Frustrating, isn't it? :(
 
Unfortunately, i have the same experience as Ben and bbush.

I performed several times a clean install of Vista, without any problem.

Now i have to do some upgrades.
the 1st computer is a bit special, it has a Raid0 configuration.
the 2nd is just normal.

Both are rather new, with no exotic hardware.
Both are Win XP Prof with SP2.

Both seem to stop the upgrade in the final phase: Completing upgrade.
Then the counter shows 34%.
After several hours, i see 35%.
Many many hours later 36%.
The computers are almost 24 hours busy now.

There is still HD activity.
From time to time the led is flashing.

Please, can anyone shed a light on this....?
 
Your experience sounds a bit different -- sounds like you're doing an
upgrade, I'm doing a clean install. You've still got HD activity, and the
light is flashing -- bbush and me are locking up completely, no hard drive
activity, no blinking lights... locked up and frustrated :(

With luck though, even though our symptoms are different, maybe the solution
will be the same.
 
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