Vista reinstall issues on Dell computer

Ok.

I just got a new Dell computer (1720), that is perfectly capable of running Vista (T9300, 4GB, Go8600, 320GB HDD etc etc), so there should be no problems.

I got it with vista home premium installed on the thing. If you guys know Dell then you know they also come preinstalled with alot of crap so usually I just do a format and reinstall windows fresh.

That is where my problems come in, using my Dell reinstall Vista CD I run into a problem when reinstalling.

I boot from the CD (f12, choose boot from CD ROM), then format/delete the partition, create a new partition, tell vista to install from that partition, all goes well. It prompts me for some info, and goes through the process. It seems to run fine until it does the reboot, and gets into the infamous "Completing Installation" stage, where it sits for hours until eventually the screen turns black except for the mouse (which remains movable). It will stay like that I assume forever (I left it overnight and nothing). So then I restart the process, I've tried three times now.

Does anyone know what I can do? I tried cleaning the CD, I tried going into the bios and changing some settings (but nothing seemed off), (to let you know I am pretty computer savvy, I have built my own desktop), no external things were plugged into the computer. I'm not trying to run any fancy setup (RAID), I've swapped out the OS cd for the Dell driver CD during the reboot to no avail.

Please help.

 

You can ask Dell for replacement install disks... maybe yours is somehow corrupt.

 

Thank you for the reply. I actually got it fixed. I (unfortunatly) have a tendancy to post while I am in the middle of troubleshooting, and sometimes I actually figure out the problem, which wastes your time. For that I am sorry.

I can however post what solved my problems.

First I went into the Bios and reset everything to defaults.

Then (what actually fixed it) when choosing what partition to install into I clicked the driver button, put in my driver disk and installed the driver. I didn't need to swap disks at any time, and the installation proceeded smoothly.

I can't say that I am impressed with how vista reinstalls, but at least messing around with it a solution did present itself.

Thanks everyone.

 

Glad you got it figured out.

 

So just to clarify (seeing as I'm getting a Vostro and I want to dual boot with XP) you put the driver disk in after choosing which partition to install to because it required the SATA drivers for the HDD, yes?

 

You can do that. What I do is put the extracted Intel Matrix Storage driver onto a USB FLASH drive. After setting the new partitions just prior to vista installation, I click the "Load Driver" button and have the driver on my USB FLASH drive install. From there, just start the installation.

 

I did it in a more risky fashion. I had the harddrive partitioned already and I simply put the driver on partition H, while I am install Vista on partition E, and just have it loads from the other partition. It work, just not recommended, I did it because I didn't have a blank CD or USB stick available.