can't install

[Guest]

i have a athlon 3200 64 bit proc. 1.5 gig of ram. 80 gig hd. and a gigabyte
k8u-939 mobo. when i try to install vista, this is what happens. i start my
pc with the dvd in the drive. it says to boot from cd/dvd press any key, so i
do. the next screen says loading windows files... and a bar starts to fill
up, from left to right across the screen. when the bar reaches all the way to
the right, it reaches a flashing cursor, my system then restarts. then it
takes me back to the press any key to boot from cd dvd. so from here i have
pressed nothing, and my xp install boots up, i have pressed a key and the
loading windows files... bar fills up again and ir restarts and does the same
thing over again. i have taken the cd out after the loading windows files
screen, hoping it would start the install, but it also starts my xp install.
im pretty sure it shouldn't be this hard. but i dont know. and btw i even
tried switching around my boot devices and still nothing helps. if anyone
knows how to fix this plz reply

 

[Guest]

Are you booting from the cd? When I installed it, I was running XP and just
stuck the DVD into the DVD drive and the Vista installer started with the
graphical install.

My experience has been that when you see the press any key to boot from the
cd and you press a key then you are essentially starting over again. When
you don't press any keys the hard drive should boot and the installation
should continue.

What is the boot order in your bios? Mine has hdd first, cdrom second,
floppy third.

What kind of hdd do you have? ide? What partitioning scheme are you using?