Why is Vista clean install taking so long??

It is stuck on completing installation for 20 minutes now... I'm worried that something's wrong.. have any other ppl who've clean installed taken this long on this stage

 

Can someone please help... I know you guys are reading

 

that's a tough one.

did you try to just restart? it should start where it left off ...and since it was completed it should jsut start.
i ' ve installed vista before and it was so fast -

 

yeah, but then it stays stuck on the vista boot progress bar.... and I have to start the whole install process again

could it be the DVD?

 

/deletemessage

 

probably cause vista is an overbloated hunk of....

 

i doubt its the dvd... do you see any scratches?

if that was me i'd just restart...

why did you do a reinstall? to delete bloat ware? was there alot? or are you doing an install from a REAL vista DVD not the dell restoration cd?

 

yeah, it was to delete bloatware, and I installed it from the vista reinstallation CD

 

Vista on average takes 15-20 minutes to install, max. Here's my suggestion reboot from the Vista CD, don't enter the key you can do that after Vista installs.

*Important* Go to customized installation, select drive options, delete the partition, format the drive then continue with the install. You could be dealing with a screwy partition.

 

I had trouble when I did a clean Vista install on my 1720. But it was because I was using a different drive than the one that came with it. I had to go to the BIOS and disable the AHCI option under SATA for the install to work. Otherwise it would do exactly what you are seeing.

 

WOW! that's fast. XP takes like approx 1 1/2 hours.

 

That's what I was about to say. ^

 

Don't forget, you need to consider, CPU and amount Ram. My T60 comes with the T7200 and it has 3GB of ram. XP takes a little longer like 30 minutes to install. I have installed Vista on my laptop Vista U. (15-20 minutes) and Vista H.P. on my desktop and it's about 25 minutes.

 

uh, its not really the cpu or ram that comes into play when re-installing

its your HD speed/sustained transfer rates and seek times and your dvd drive


20 min is unusually fast

i have 80gb raptors and they don't install that fast

>20 is normal, though your HD and DVD drive should be running

if its not, then you need to restart cause somethings wrong

 

I have a 160GB 5400 RPM drive and a 8X dual layer dvd writer. In any event it installs very quick on both my rigs so no complaints with the install process.

 

I had a hunch it had to do with the SATA operation in the BIOS... so I switch it to ATA mode only for the install??? or do I keep it like that always??

 

UPDATE: I am no loger having issues thanks to ecaggiani's suggestion.. I decide to keep it in ATA mode since AHCI is giving me issues... Otherwise, no problems for now

 

Yeah I just tried re-enabling AHCI in the BIOS and Vista won't boot. So I disabled it again and all is fine.

I'd really like to know if there is something to this AHCI stuff and if I'm actually missing out on something by having it disabled. I mean, is a 5400RPM drive with AHCI enabled as fast or faster than a 7200RPM drive without AHCI?

 

idk, hopefully, a expert will read this thread and answer that for us

 

I actually have the exact same problem you are having dj and my computer is almost identical to yours except I have a faster proc. I just now changed my HD config to ata rather than that ahci option. Only thing that bothered me was having to disable the flash module that went hand in hand with ahci. Anyone know anything about that???

 

I just read in another post ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=137749&page=15) that a reinstall of Vista can be done with the AHCI option turned on. You just have to install the SATA drivers from the Dell CD during the Vista install. He explains it in the post.

Of course, now I don't know if I want to reinstall everything again just to be able to enable that option. The big question of the day is...what does AHCI give us? I already have a 7200RPM drive in there. Will AHCI improve its performance?

 

Well I think I broke the speed record for a Vista install (about 6 minutes). However, since I changed to ATA the computer would not recognize my nVidia 8600. So I am trying a fresh start with the AHCI turned back on.

Any suggestions why my computer couldn't detect the video card?

 

You install the drivers?