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Cant get Vista 64 to install

J

jsand2

Junior Member
I recently purchased an OEM copy of Vista 64 to install on my pc that currently has XP 32 and I can not get it to install. I do not wish to keep anything that is on my hard drive. I currently have a 160gb hard drive and have also recently purchased a 500gb hard drive. My plans were to use the 160gb drive as an install drive and to have the 500gb as an external storage drive. When I put the DVD in and restart my computer it does not recognize the disc and instead reboots into XP. I have changed the BIOS so that it would recognize the DVD and then it would ask to boot from cd when i said yes it would look like it was going to and then still boot into XP. So I decided to use the newly NTFS formatted 500gb hard drive that had nothing on it as the internal drive and to do a clean install of Vista on to it. When I did this I actually got the install disc to boot and got all the way past where I put the CD key in to where it asks me where I want to install Vista to. It will not recognize the drive. When I unplug either the 160gb or the 500gb and plug it into my extrnal enclosure it will read the drive but not allow me to install through the external drive because of the USB. It will not however recognize either of those drives internally like it says it needs to to install it on. I was kind of confused as where to go after here. Upon browsing the forums I saw stuff that was kind of related but nothing that really answered this question. Thanks in advance to any responses to this!
 
Download the utility from the manufacturer of your 160GB drive and wipe the drive or just the first few sectors if that option is available.

Your motherboard doesn't like to wait long enough for the DVD drive to spin up and start doing it's thing and jumps right to the HD. If that drive is made to not be bootable, it will work. If you think about it, you proved this out with the 500GB drive.

I gotta say it, your post is near impossible to read and comprehend without paragraphs.
 
1) Did you build your computer yourself?

2) Have you installed the chipset drivers for your motherboard hardware?

3) Have you installed the SATA controller drivers?
 
Delete the partitions on the 160.
You can then make a NTFS 160GB partition (or whatever you want) and format them NTFS.
Hook the 160 up to an internal port; try different physical ports if needed to get it to work. Sometimes certain ports are better to use for software compatibility and boot ordering than others depending on whether your ports are split between different controller chips or whatever. Sometimes you need to go into the BIOS and change the controller mode, for instance to AHCI or 'IDE' instead of 'RAID' mode.

That should stop the HDD from trying to boot and help Vista's stupid installer realize that it can / should let you install to that drive.

Make sure you're installing from a Vista SP1 DVD if possible.
 
I use a program called nLite to customize my XP installations with a slipstream. Slipstream means you take the manufacturer drivers for your chipset / SATA and roll it into the installation.

The creators of nLite created a Vista version called vLite.

I would download the drivers you need, then customize the Vista CD / DVD you have with vLite and then try again. If the drive is recognized in the BIOS with the correct size and hardware manufacturer, it probably is a driver issue, which customizing your Vista install will fix. It will also let you roll in windows patches and such.
 
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