Vista Installation hangs with black screen or BSD

[Supernova]

Hi there,
I wonder if anyone can help me.
I have tried to install Vista on two different machines with no joy:

1) Machine one is my main PC which is getting on now but I believe is
more than capable of running vista it has the following: MSI KT6
Delta-FISR Motherboard, AMD Athlon XP-A 2100+ over clocked to 3200+, 2Gb
of DDR Ram, ATI Radeon 9550 Graphics with 256MB. Running XP pro SP2.
I have tried to install the business, ultimate and enterprise versions.
I have tried the upgrade and the clean install paths with each version.
Every time the installation hangs after the first reboot when the screen
goes black with a blinking cursor at the top left hand corner. Any ideas?

2) Machine two is an Asus W5000 laptop with Intel centrino chipset... I
can't remember the exact flavour though! I have tried to install the
business edition on it when the installation hang with the BSD and some
talk about the computer is being shut down to prevent damage. Now I
haven't tried to do a clean install on this Laptop, only upgrade.

PS All the above windows are downloaded from TechNet Plus as image files
and burned to DVDs using Nero 7 premium
Thanks a lot for any advice / help

 

[Supernova]

Hi there,
I wonder if anyone can help me.
I have tried to install Vista on two different machines with no joy:

1) Machine one is my main PC which is getting on now but I believe is
more than capable of running vista it has the following: MSI KT6
Delta-FISR Motherboard, AMD Athlon XP-A 2100+ over clocked to 3200+, 2Gb
of DDR Ram, ATI Radeon 9550 Graphics with 256MB. Running XP pro SP2.
I have tried to install the business, ultimate and enterprise versions.
I have tried the upgrade and the clean install paths with each version.
Every time the installation hangs after the first reboot when the screen
goes black with a blinking cursor at the top left hand corner. Any ideas?

2) Machine two is an Asus W5000 laptop with Intel centrino chipset... I
can't remember the exact flavour though! I have tried to install the
business edition on it when the installation hang with the BSD and some
talk about the computer is being shut down to prevent damage. Now I
haven't tried to do a clean install on this Laptop, only upgrade.

PS All the above windows are downloaded from TechNet Plus as image files
and burned to DVDs using Nero 7 premium
Thanks a lot for any advice / help

Just a Couple of corrections:
My main Pc CPU is an athlon XP 2500+ and it has a 250GB IDE and 150GB HDD

 

[Don]

Just a Couple of corrections:
My main Pc CPU is an athlon XP 2500+ and it has a 250GB IDE and 150GB HDD

The usual reason for this behavior is lack of correct hardware drivers
for the video card or the disk controller (esp. SATA) or both.

You didn't mention SATA, so my guess would be video drivers. You may
need to download Vista-compatible video drivers from the manufacturer.

 

[Drew Salad]

This has happened to me too. I was installing to an external USB hard drive
(beta 2) and on the first reboot, the screen would be black and just stay
that way for about ten minutes until I would reboot.

 

[Supernova]

The usual reason for this behavior is lack of correct hardware drivers
for the video card or the disk controller (esp. SATA) or both.

You didn't mention SATA, so my guess would be video drivers. You may
need to download Vista-compatible video drivers from the manufacturer.

Hi,
Thanks for the advice. I will download and install vista compatible
drivers for my graphics card and report back. Although I do not see how
that would solve the problem if the installation failed even when doing
a clean install.
And yes your guess was right, I do not have SATA drives in my system.

 

[Guest]

Reporting back:
1) I have detached my USB drive
2) Deleted a TrueImage SecureZone hidden partition on my main HDD.
3) Returned all BOIS settings to default
4) Performed a clean install of vista ultimate. this went through with no
problems.

Now, I think it is the hidden partition which may have been causing the
problems with installation. The reason I am saying this, is after installing
Vista I re-installed true Image 10. No problems. I created a new SecureZone
hidden partition and vista won't boot up. luckily I was able to fix it by
putting the vista DVD in drive and booting from there. the thing fixed it
self but de-activated securezone boot up menu.
What do people think? Has anyone had the same problem before?

 

[GeraldF]

(e-mail address removed)>,
(e-mail address removed) says...

Reporting back:
1) I have detached my USB drive
2) Deleted a TrueImage SecureZone hidden partition on my main HDD.
3) Returned all BOIS settings to default
4) Performed a clean install of vista ultimate. this went through with no
problems.

Now, I think it is the hidden partition which may have been causing the
problems with installation. The reason I am saying this, is after installing
Vista I re-installed true Image 10. No problems. I created a new SecureZone
hidden partition and vista won't boot up. luckily I was able to fix it by
putting the vista DVD in drive and booting from there. the thing fixed it
self but de-activated securezone boot up menu.
What do people think? Has anyone had the same problem before?

Interesting. I use Acronis TI10 all the time, but never
use the Secure Zone. Follow the discussion here:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=173647
&highlight=vista+secure+zone

It appears that Acronis alters the MBR of the boot disk
and while XP tolerated this, Vista does not.

Probably should back up to external drive and not secure
zone. Personally I always felt the secure zone was
doomed if the Hard Drive started to fail, which is
probably the main reason for recovering with Acronis.

 

[Supernova]

(e-mail address removed)>,
(e-mail address removed) says...
Interesting. I use Acronis TI10 all the time, but never
use the Secure Zone. Follow the discussion here:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=173647
&highlight=vista+secure+zone

It appears that Acronis alters the MBR of the boot disk
and while XP tolerated this, Vista does not.

Probably should back up to external drive and not secure
zone. Personally I always felt the secure zone was
doomed if the Hard Drive started to fail, which is
probably the main reason for recovering with Acronis.

Thats true. TI10's SZ does alter the MBR. Vista doesn't seem to like this! I
do double backups. as recovering from the secure zone is much faster than
recovering from an external USB drive. The USB drive is used here as a plan
B if the main HDD fails along with its secure zone. I guess I will have to
live with no Secure Zone and do my back ups to an external drive only!