Media Center install not working

Can anyone help? I did a clean install of Vista on my 1330 from the Vista CD and when I tried to install the Media Center, it got about 4% in and then said "Installation Errors, Press ESC to exit." No explanation or anything. I made a partition for it (E drive) but I'm not sure what to do next, other than reformat everything and begin with the disc?

Am I missing something? Thanks for any point in the right direction.

Travis

 

which version of vista did you install? also was it 32 or 64 bit?

 

Sorry, Vista Ultimate 32bit. Thanks for any advice.

 

it might not sound very useful, but how did you unistalled media center? because it's already installed in ultimate, i'd recommend backing up all of your files and formatting windows..

 

Assuming you are referring to Dell Mediadirect, (media center automatically is installed with every fresh install of Vista ultimate or Vista Home Premium)

if you just did a clean install of vista without initially putting in your mediadirect CD... the result will be your mediadirect partition is messed up and mediadirect will not work.

What you have to do is reinstall vista again, but what you do first is bootup from your mediadirect CD, then allocate partitions by following the instructions that pop up. The mediadirect CD will then show on the screen to eject your mediadirect cd, then stick in your vista install dvd (in your case, the vista ultimate), then you reboot, boot from cd drive again, the follow the vista installation process normally.

Finally, once you get vista ultimate all set up, you can safetly insert the mediadirect cd and the installation will work.

 

Thank you. I did mean Dell MediaDirect. Bummer about the reinstall. Oh well, it's only my 6th or so reformatting since I switched 4 different 1330's and between XP and Vista so I'm getting pretty good at it.

I have the computer just where I like it now. Bummer.

Thanks for the help.