Installation woes - ASUS m6 laptop

[Guest]

I have tried installing Vista on above laptop a number of times now. I tried
installing it a few time last week, and yesterday started trying again
because i see no reason why Vista shouldn't install.
Basic Laptop Specs:
Pentium M 1.5GHz
Centrino chipset
ATi Radeon 9100 IGP
IDE 40GB HD
1GB RAM (PC2700)
I have tried installing to a second partition (formatted within XP) a couple
of times, installing to an empty HD, and installing to a primary partition
(formatted by Vista).
Every time, the installation works fine, at the last reboot i have to boot
in 'last known good config' or i end up with the dreaded black screen. About
half the time, i can get into VGA mode, create an account etc, and login. No
matter what i do at this point to get drivers installed, after rebooting i
cannot access the Vista desktop. This has happened about a dozen times now!
When booting in normal mode: black screen, HD activity for a time.
Booting in (any) safe mode: hangs after loading crcdisk.sys
Booting in last known/VGA mode: same as normal mode.
Repairing install from DVD: no errors found.
I understand that Vista is still very rough with hardware support, but
surely a 2yo laptop should at least be able to boot it - any suggestions or
ideas would be greatly appreciated!

 

[droid]

I am not sure if this is a device issue, but here's some guidance if you
want to report a bug:


Finding setup logs, reporting and attaching logs to report, figuring out
what device or driver causes hangs or crash during setup:

1. google -> beta client (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=43655)
The first link should be Microsoft link. It needs .NET but I think it will
be installed if you try to run it without it..

2. finding and identifying the correct logs

setupapi.app.log
setupapi.dev.log <<-- last 100 lines here may indicate the hanging driver

These are the primary setup logs, there are others but these are the major.


Hint: Before searching logs try Folder Options and enable viewing of hidden
folders and files. Also try Run diskmgmt.msc -> assign drive letters for
partitions with no drive letters.

A:

There can be multiple logs with the same name, but they are different! First
look at the drive you tried to install Vista to, if it has Vista
Windows\INF\ directory and the mentioned logs files.

B: early setup failure

If you can't find Windows VISTA directory (if setup did not get so far) then
look all volumes/partitions in the drives that were on the machine during
the install for directories starting with $. There are 2-4 of them (possibly
in different partitions) depending on when the setup failed. Search for .log
under all the *:\$WINDOWS


A & B:

Make sure the date and Minute timestamp of the log files are around the time
when the setup failed, sometimes a setup/install failure causes the computer
to automatically reboot and the setup will run again but failing in
different way than the first time (making the bug report less useful). For
best bug report it's better to catch the failure when it first happens. Yes
it means starting the install all over again and keeping eye on it. But this
will guarantee that the last line in the log will be around the time of the
failure. If it is a driver crash then you can figure out the offending
driver yourself just by looking at the last lines of setupapi.dev.log.

You wouldn't want to be looking at or submitting the wrong logs, right?