Black Screen During Vista Install

[Guest]

I'm attempting to set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu and Vista. I'm trying to
install Vista on a 40gb partition of my harddrive, and I've made sure to
remove the boot flag from the other partition during install.

It makes it through the initial restart, and at "Completing Installation . .
.." is seems to try and restart, but instead hangs on a black screen. All
that is visible is a mouse cursor. I've made it to this point three times
now, and left it for hours each time. Nothing happens. Eventually, I cut
power and start it up. It tries to load up Windows, but stays perpetually on
the load screen (green bar, and that's it)...

Any ideas? I've removed all USB peripherals, there should be plenty of
space on the HDD (I've also reformatted for each install attempt), tried the
restore tool on the DVD... etc. I can't think of anything that would be a
problem. I know I'm going to have trouble with the master boot loader later,
but that shouldn't be until I've actually got Vista loaded, and from what
I've heard that's a problem that only affects (though caused by) Vista.

Dell Inspiron 1701
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz
3GB Ram
160GB HDD (40GB partition for Vista)
NVIDIA 8600M 256MB DDR2

....Help, please?

 

[Guest]

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

 

[Guest]

Thanks for reading my question. That was a very thoughtful answer.

....To clarify: I am -not- having trouble dual-booting at this time. I AM
having trouble installing Vista onto the seperate partition at all. I've
since tried yet again, and the same black screen pops up. Upon cutting power
and restarting, I'm given the options to start in safe mode or regularly;
neither works.

That is what I need help with. Not dual-booting.