Vista Home Premium Install Hangs At Completing. (Clean Install)

I am trying to install windows Vista Home Premium in my system and i don't know what the hell is going wrong with the installation process. Installation starts up fine but after reaching all the way up to completion it gets hanged. I have tried waiting for hours but i cant see any progress once it gets hanged. I have tried carrying out the whole installation process couple of times but no avail. Its really frustrating, i am not able to make out whats causing it to get hanged just before completion. I have clearing cmos but that's not helping, i wanted to know if there is anything else that i can try out further to carry out the installation successfully?

I think you might have not loaded correct sata diver while carrying out the installation process. I will like to inform you that after loading the driver from setup,windows Vista will proceed with the installation process but later it will search for those drivers. While it searches for sata diver you wont get any prompt rather it will sit there and will get hanged. In order to fix this insert your Driver disk in DVDROM after Vista copies files and reboots. If things goes well then you will get a message saying "Completing Installation", after that it will start looking for sata diver and will automatically detect it from cd and will proceed with its installation. Juts try it out and let me know if you have any query further, i will surely try to help you out with possible solution for it, best of luck.

Thanks for the reply Phalguni88 , i have tried following the solution hat you have mentioned but i am not able to get it working. I am not sure if i am doing it wrong, just when my system reboots i take out the driver disk and wait until "Completing Installation" message. After seeing that message i insert the disc back but it seems as if it is not detecting sata diver from the cd and gets hanged again. I have tried doing the same trick thrice but no luck, just let me know the right way if i am doing it wrong. I just need to install Vista anyhow, there are number of pending work i have to carry, so any further help regrading this issue will be highly appreciated.

I worked on this one for about a week. for those still supporting this aging machine, take a look:


My buddy has a Dell XPS410/Dimension 9200 with Vista 32-bit which was giving a variety of problems, including startup errors and general instability, as Vista has a tendency to do. I tried several fixes, including an in-place upgrade of Vista and a clean install on the existing Vista partition (you know, the one where the existing Windows folder & profile are moved to Windows.old). In both scenarios, the installation stalled out after the reboot around the 67% mark, during Completing Installation. The system hung, the pointer wouldn’t move, fans shut down and the HDD stopped spinning.

System config:
Dell XPS410/Dimension 9200
Mobo: Dell E210882
Chipset: Intel P965/G965
Intel 82801 HH I/O controller
CPU: Intel Core 2 E6300 1.86GHz

A quick scan of the internet revealed that this is a known issue with this particular motherboard/chipset/onboard RAID controller. I tried a variety of install strategies, all including the Load Drivers option early in the install process. I also tried installing Windows 7 and that hung at the same place, so the problem was not a Vista issue.

The problem seemed to be with the drivers for the RAID controller.

After endless web searches and multiple failed install attempts, it finally worked. Here are the steps:

1. Flashed BIOS to 2.5.3
2. Start off with clean hard drive if possible (used WD Data Lifeguard to zero out an existing hard drive)
3. Connected the HDD to SATA port 3 on the controller hub and the DVD to port 4 (suggested on Intel’s site: http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm) .
4. BIOS: set Autodetect ATA/SATA
5. Start Windows 7 (or Vista) installation
6. Load Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers (version 7.5 or later) for 82801HH AND ICH8R from USB thumb drive (leave it in the USB port throughout the install process)
7. Allow OS install to continue through reboot
8. CRITICAL: On reboot just before Completing Installation, change BIOS: SATA
9. Also, change boot sequence to actual HDD (in my case, Maxtor) – you may have to save/exit BIOS setup, let the reboot start and enter BIOS a second time to make the actual hard drive show up in the boot sequence.

If you’re having this same problem, I hope this saves you some pain & frustration.