This system came preinstalled with Vista Basic. The hard drive failed and i replaced it. The orignal drive was 160 GB SATA. I replaced the drive with an 80 GB SATA. I use the recovery CD'S that HP sent and they work and get to the part on the Vista install and it shows the status as Completing Installation. It is now 8:52 am Sunday morning. I started the recovery lastnight around 7 pm. It should not take this long to install. This is not an issue with the recovery CD'S. I have tried a Vista Anytime Upgrade disk just to see if it would work. I have ran test in the BIOS HP'S and Compaqs have a SMART test in the BIOS the short test 2 mins the long test about 30 mins. Both test pass. I ran the PC Doctor test its a Compaq diagnostics test and all test passed. I have spent many hours on this issue. I installed 98 SE just to see if it would install and it did install. I have a program called Partition Commander it will boot to the CD like a live CD. There is a partition exploer. I can look in both partitions and see files. These disk must create a recovery back on new drives because it is there. I have also hooked up an IDE drive and tried the recovery of Vista and still it stays on the Completing installation. If i reboot i will just get a message that Vista did not complete and to retry. Ive read something about an issue with ATI and Intel chipset. The motherboard has both ATI and intel Chipset. Im just not sure what to do. The guy who had the computer before me. He said he ran the recovery several times, But it was on the recovery partition. Oh and i have tried 2 different DVD-Rom / DVDRW drives. They are not the orignal drives either but should it matter? Should it matter that the hard drive is not the orignal? If it doese and HP doese this to force customers to buy from them then they should be sued. Sorry i spelled that wrong but im sure people know what i mean

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My total *GUESS* is that the SIZE of the drive makes a difference. Those factory recovery disks are written pretty specific so as to avoid as much as possible using them for different machines. If a 160gig drive came out then a 160gig drive should go back in.

The recovery disk is most likely trying to work with partitions based on a 160gig drive.

"This is not an issue with the recovery CD'S. I have tried a Vista Anytime Upgrade disk just to see if it would work." How can you be sure ? Isn't the Vista Anytime Upgrade disk is a different disk, isn't it ? I doubt that the problem is the size of the harddrive or that it's different.

The anytime upgrade is a different disk. And
like i said i tried a 160 GB IDE drive and it still hangs on the completeing installation. The orignal 160 GB drive was SATA and the 80 GB drive is SATA. I don't have a 160 GB SATA to try only the 160 GB IDE and like i said it also hangs on the install with both the recovery CD and the Anytime Upgrade. So that just about leaves it to a vista problem maybe? Before the orignal 160 GB SATA drive died i installed XP Professional sp2. It installed just fine. I made a ghost backup because i knew i was going to have to get a new drive. If i use the ghost disk i made. It restores it but gets to the XP splash screen and reboots over and over. Now XP will not even install. It boots to the CD it gets to the part where it prepares the drive an dsaids there is no disk detected but it installed before. The drive is good other disk detects the drive and it passed all the test. Im just not sure what to do. It may also be a memory problem. I did run the PC-Doctor and all test passes. Maybe i should run memtest.

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Difficult to diagnose this without seeing it. I'd suspect (despite your tests being ok) that you have a hardware issue. So my first line of attack would be to disconnect/turn off in bios anything that's not essential to windows booting (how much is 'onboard' the mobo?). Particularly, if > 1 stick of RAM, use each on its own & see if any improvement. If not, I'd suspect the motherboard.

I have ran memtest86 and no problems were found. There is onboard Video Onboard sound. And 1 stick of DDR2 1 GB memory. All the test ive done it comes out good. I really don't think its the motherboard. But if it is. I will just buy a new motherboard and use the same processor memory harddrive and CD/DVD/DVDRW.

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Write zeroes to the drive & run the recovery disc again.

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

I have done that millions and millions of times. Here is what i did do.

I know this is the Vista forum but maybe i can get help.

I restored the ghost image. It did what it always would do. Reboot after the XP Screen.
so i hit F8 on startup and disabled the reboot on error. I am now getting a stop error.

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage
to your computer.

If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer.
Remove any newly installed hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to
Make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then
Restart your computer

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0XF78B7524,
0xC0000034,0X00000000,0x00000000)

I cannot tell if the 0 is an O or a 0. I think its 0. I googled the error and didn't find anything. I cannot run CHKDSK because my XP CD want detect my drive. Maybe i do need to check the drive to see if it is
configured correctly. What doese it mean by terminated?

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It might help to run the XP recovery console and then fixboot and fixmbr. You might also want to check that the SATA mode is set to IDE and not AHCI or RAID, though I don't see why that would have changed.

Thank you so much kx5m2g. Looks like changeing the SATA mode to IDE worked.

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Glad I could help.

Its all up and going. I need another GB of memory. I purchased this PC for $100.00 from a friend. The orignal drive was failing the SMART test on startup. So i figured if thats all that was wrong then its worth the $100.00. I was able to get recovery CD'S from HP. Now i got vista installed and its running good. Just a little sluggish but on the net its real fast. Just opening programs and starting upis slow. Im not a big fan of Vista but i guess i may as well force myself to like it. I may be upgradeing to Vista Ultimate becasue i have always used the best when it comes to an OS.

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