dv6500t Vista Installation Problem

I recently purchased a dv6500t, and (of course) it came with all the bloatware. I thought it might be easier just to reinstall from the restore CD that I bought with the laptop, so I tried it -- big mistake. It successfully formats and restarts, then it gets to the black screen of "please wait" with the ever-expanding dots "....."

At this point, the screen goes entirely black except for the white mouse cursor, which I can still move. It stays this way for awhile, then restarts itself and returns to this "black screen with the cursor." At this point, it will stay on the black screen indefinitely if I don't restart it. Upon restarting it, I'm informed that "Vista failed to install and I need to restart my installation." Obviously, I've done this a few times, and every time it installs the same thing happens. Restarting in safe mode, etc, doesn't help either.

I'm pretty flustered. It was loaded and working (bloatily) when I first got the laptop, it wasn't until I tried to reformat from the restore CD that it decided it didn't like me -- so I doubt the hardware is an issue, or even the BIOS settings?

Any idea what's wrong? Could updating the BIOS before I install help? I've spent hours searching for solutions to this problem, and others (mostly when Vista was in beta) reported sort of similar issues, but they all had slight differences and none of the resolutions to those issues have worked for me.

Thanks in advance =/

 

its a long shot but maybe try going into bios and see if you can disable the setting for the sata controller? i honestly think it's hardware related because i reinstalled vista twice on my 9500t and thats with the original bios and the f.08. try it with the old bios and if you can try flashing it if the previous option does not work. gl

 

Where would one get a copy of a suitable BIOS to flash with? Does HP site have updated BIOS?

 

You could try booting and pressing F11 using the restore partition.

The bloatware is on the recovery DVD you made, and it's in the recovery partition. The only way to get around it is to have a clean copy of XP, Vista, wipe the drive clean, and install from scratch. The good news is my guide is step by step with all the drivers you need.
Dual Boot with XP and Vista

 

Thanks for the advice, but I've decided based on my experiences with Vista that it's far from "safely marketable." I'm going back to XP. I bought the recovery DVD from HP, since I didn't get a DVD burner (so it would have been 10 million CDs to burn it myself). So, if at some point in the future I feel very compelled to upgrade to Vista, I can. I'm too disgusted to really even consider dual-booting, I just want all traces of Vista gone for now.

So, I'm doing a clean format of the harddrive and starting with a free copy of XP I can get from my university in the Fall. Until then, I'll probably just boot with Ubuntu or something. It's no big deal, I have a working PC that I can use until the Fall.