vista won t boot correctly

I'm on my 4th install by different methods and the same thing happens each time....
During the installation, when it gets to "Completing Installation" and reboots, the screen hangs at "Windows 2006" and eventually all the drive activity stops (left it for 90 mins - still nothing).
When I try to reboot the same happens - however, if I press F8 and choose "Last known good" I can access Vista - but if I try anything that needs a reboot, it's back to the same black screen.
Any advice? Thanks

try the install again all over, when it hangs again, reboot *but be sure to boot into previous os XP or whatever*. Make sure it doesn't try booting vista again after the hang.
then:
change folder options to make hidden folders visible before the search.
search all partitions (may not be visible! -> diskmgmt.msc -> assign drive letter) for .log files. The interesting log files are 4 to 30 MB in size, sometimes at vista partitions windows\inf directory if the setup went that far. Submit these logs to microsoft using Beta Client.
*If there was no vista partition in diskmgmt.msc* then the log files are most likely in the same drive your previous OS was installed (if it had space for the setup files). There should be a hidden, weird named folder, in root of the volume and the logs are somewhere under there (search).

"keja" wrote in message

I'm on my 4th install by different methods and the same thing happens each time....
During the installation, when it gets to "Completing Installation" and reboots, the screen hangs at "Windows 2006" and eventually all the drive activity stops (left it for 90 mins - still nothing).
When I try to reboot the same happens - however, if I press F8 and choose "Last known good" I can access Vista - but if I try anything that needs a reboot, it's back to the same black screen.
Any advice? Thanks

Thanks for your very detailed response. I've found a log in the inf directory that ends with "Exit status: failure" so I guess that's the important one and I'll send it off.
"droid" wrote:

try the install again all over, when it hangs again, reboot *but be sure to boot into previous os XP or whatever*. Make sure it doesn't try booting vista again after the hang.
then:
change folder options to make hidden folders visible before the search.
search all partitions (may not be visible! -> diskmgmt.msc -> assign drive letter) for .log files. The interesting log files are 4 to 30 MB in size, sometimes at vista partitions windows\inf directory if the setup went that far. Submit these logs to microsoft using Beta Client.
*If there was no vista partition in diskmgmt.msc* then the log files are most likely in the same drive your previous OS was installed (if it had space for the setup files). There should be a hidden, weird named folder, in root of the volume and the logs are somewhere under there (search).

"keja" wrote in message I'm on my 4th install by different methods and the same thing happens each time....
During the installation, when it gets to "Completing Installation" and reboots, the screen hangs at "Windows 2006" and eventually all the drive activity stops (left it for 90 mins - still nothing).
When I try to reboot the same happens - however, if I press F8 and choose "Last known good" I can access Vista - but if I try anything that needs a reboot, it's back to the same black screen.
Any advice? Thanks

Hi, I've been having the same problem as you have. To overcome it, you must load vista using 'last known good configuration', open up device manager and update the n-vidia video card drivers to v87.45. You can get these of n-vidia's website. They where origionally intended for 5308, but seem to correct the hang in beta 2, or at least it did on my pc. If you don't have an n-vidia graphics card, i'm afraid this won't solve the problem. Hope this helps. Mike G
"keja" wrote:

Thanks for your very detailed response. I've found a log in the inf directory that ends with "Exit status: failure" so I guess that's the important one and I'll send it off.
"droid" wrote:
try the install again all over, when it hangs again, reboot *but be sure to boot into previous os XP or whatever*. Make sure it doesn't try booting vista again after the hang.
then:
change folder options to make hidden folders visible before the search.
search all partitions (may not be visible! -> diskmgmt.msc -> assign drive letter) for .log files. The interesting log files are 4 to 30 MB in size, sometimes at vista partitions windows\inf directory if the setup went that far. Submit these logs to microsoft using Beta Client.
*If there was no vista partition in diskmgmt.msc* then the log files are most likely in the same drive your previous OS was installed (if it had space for the setup files). There should be a hidden, weird named folder, in root of the volume and the logs are somewhere under there (search).

"keja" wrote in message I'm on my 4th install by different methods and the same thing happens each time....
During the installation, when it gets to "Completing Installation" and reboots, the screen hangs at "Windows 2006" and eventually all the drive activity stops (left it for 90 mins - still nothing).
When I try to reboot the same happens - however, if I press F8 and choose "Last known good" I can access Vista - but if I try anything that needs a reboot, it's back to the same black screen.
Any advice? Thanks

There was just one log?
If it was a driver crash there should be 2 logs: setupapi.app.log setupapi.dev.log
The last 20 lines in the ....dev.log tell you in human readable way often what piece of hardware was it, in the case it was driver crash.
"keja" wrote in message

Thanks for your very detailed response. I've found a log in the inf directory that ends with "Exit status: failure" so I guess that's the important one and I'll send it off.
"droid" wrote:
try the install again all over, when it hangs again, reboot *but be sure to boot into previous os XP or whatever*. Make sure it doesn't try booting vista again after the hang.
then:
change folder options to make hidden folders visible before the search.
search all partitions (may not be visible! -> diskmgmt.msc -> assign drive letter) for .log files. The interesting log files are 4 to 30 MB in size, sometimes at vista partitions windows\inf directory if the setup went that far. Submit these logs to microsoft using Beta Client.
*If there was no vista partition in diskmgmt.msc* then the log files are most likely in the same drive your previous OS was installed (if it had space for the setup files). There should be a hidden, weird named folder, in root of the volume and the logs are somewhere under there (search).

"keja" wrote in message I'm on my 4th install by different methods and the same thing happens each time....
During the installation, when it gets to "Completing Installation" and reboots, the screen hangs at "Windows 2006" and eventually all the drive activity stops (left it for 90 mins - still nothing).
When I try to reboot the same happens - however, if I press F8 and choose "Last known good" I can access Vista - but if I try anything that needs a reboot, it's back to the same black screen.
Any advice? Thanks