Vista Business install will not finish. Help?

[Guest]

I ran the upgrade advisor and it says my computer is compatible with Windows
Vista, and that Vista Business (the version I want to install) is the best
version for my hardware. Whenever I try to install it, it starts installing,
says it needs to restart after getting part of the way through install, I
select Windows Setup from the boot menu, the installation screen shows up
with the mouse for about 30 seconds then restarts again without warning. This
time, the only options available on the boot menu are older version of
windows, or windows setup rollback. Windows setup rollback takes me to the
screen where it suddenly restarts after 30 seconds, and older version boots
into XP where I get a message that I cannot continue installing this version
of windows, and to make sure my computer is compatible with windows vista.

The computer I am installing on is a P4 3.0 ghz with hyperthreading and dual
channel, 1.5 gb DDR400 ram, gigabyte motherboard, 160gb seagate SATA hard
drive with two 20 gb IDE storage drives, mad dog dvd rw, geforce 5600 fx, and
soundblaster live 5.1 soundcard

Has anyone experienced this and know what is wrong?

 

[Don]

...Windows setup rollback takes me to the
screen where it suddenly restarts after 30 seconds, and older version boots
into XP where I get a message that I cannot continue installing this version
of windows...

I'm answering only because no one else has. I've seen lots of similar
posts in these groups, but no great solutions yet. I'm guessing that
you tried to upgrade from XP rather than doing a clean install. If so,
then I urge you to try a clean install instead. You may need to make
room on your hard drive first, or consider adding a new disk for Vista.

You can install Vista for 30 days without entering a product key, so try
that before activating Vista (which invalidates your XP key if you are
upgrading).