Major issues installing vista on A8Jm, endless restarting

Picked up vista at the store today. My A8Jm is a standard every day A8Jm, no upgrades, no driver updates except for the video driver.

Popped it into the DVD drive. Clicked "custom" install and told it I wanted it to install a fresh copy.

It copied some files and did it's thing with no needed input from me for about 10 minutes. It then asked to restart the computer.

Computer restarts
"ASUS" flashes on the screen
Screen goes black for 3 seconds
Computer restarts
"ASUS" flashes on the screen
Screen goes black for 3 seconds
Computer restarts
"ASUS" flashes on the screen
Screen goes black for 3 seconds
etc etc etc

I think "that is interesting". I go into BIOS and set the DVD to the first boot device and restart the computer.

Computer restarts
"ASUS" flashes on the screen
"Press any key to boot from CD...."
If I press any key, screen goes black, system restarts, back to "Prss any key.."
If I wait, screen goes black, system restart, back to "Press any key..."

At this point I figure I'll use the restore disks so I can get my laptop back so I can research the issue.

I put in the first disk, it installs, asks for the second disk, no problem, asks for the driver disk, no problem. Restart the computer.

"ASUS" flashes on the screen
Screen goes black for 3 seconds
Computer restarts
etc etc etc

Thankfully I had a full (legitimate) copy of XP sitting around from a computer I sold off. I installed from that disk and am finally able to get my computer to actually boot up.

Just for kicks I throw the Vista DVD in the drive after I have the laptop running, and tell it to boot from DVD, and it goes back to the endless restart cycle.

So the obvious question is: what the heck did I do wrong, and how do I fix it.

 

Any ideas at all?

One thing I didn't try last night was an "upgrade" install of vista from a fresh install of XP. This restarting issue worries me though, since it rendered even my restore disks completely worthless.

 

Are you using the latest bios?

 

No I am not.

I will install that first thing when I get home. Is this a known issue with older BIOS versions? And anyone have a link?

 

Try the Clean install guide in the Software forum.

Which version u got? The upgrade or full retail? If u dunno, then post here how much u paid for it.

 

The newer bios versions have fixes for Vista. I would definitely upgrade the bios before installing it.

 

I have the Home Premium upgrade version.

The problem with running the clean install is that once the Vista setup finishes it's intially installation from inside XP and restarts my computer, the computer just restarts eternally every few seconds (the only way for me to get past that is to reinstall a fresh copy of XP, even the "restore" disks wont work).

Hopefully the BIOS update will fix the boot issue. Once that is resolved I'm confident the rest of the installation will go smoothly.

 

I figured I would update my own thread with some information:

source

Looks like there may be some confirmation that ra990 is right! I will be giving this a try when I get home.

Thanks again

 

He is right. This was a problem since beta 2.

 

yep it worked!

 

Is the newest BIOS 211? I vaguely remember upgrading to that months ago

 

I saw a lot of ppl suggesting that upgrade bios to 211 would work. I have a A8jc that runs 211 but got the same issue. I went to the ASUS website and got 212 (9/2006) also still the same issue. Anyone here can point me to a particular link to download the bios that works or if you can show me any workaround that would be great. This VISTA thing makes me crazy. Thanks very much