Problem Installing Vista

[Clocker]

I've build a system out of my old spare part and some parts donated by Doug:

Fong Kai FK-320 (Excellent case, if it were a little quieter I would take it over my P180 any day).
Athlon XP 2200+ with Thermalrite heatpipe cooler (Thanks Doug)
1GB (2x512MB) DDR400
Gigabyte GA-7S748
32MB Ti200 AGP
Netgear PCI NIC

The hard drive (SATA Hitachi, 160GB) is attached to a Promise controller card since the M/B does not have SATA. The hard drive has an existing *64-bit* Vista install on it that I tried on out my Athlon 64 system. I wanted to reinstall Vista on the hard drive with the new system but it doesn't seem to be working. I can boot from the Vista DVD but every time the installer says the installation needs to be repaired but won't give me the option to just nuke it and reinstall. It gives me the option to run some Memory diagnostics or something like that.

I've tried running FDISK on the disk to just blow away the partition but that didn't seem to do anything. My guess is that either my Vista disk is bad, or the Promise controller is causing some problems, or there's something with Vista that's screwing up what I want to do. I downloaded the Ultimate Boot Disk CD but am not sure which of those tools can really help me the most. Any idea, guys?

Once I do some testing with Vista, I might give Windows Home Server a try.

TIA!

C

 

[ddrueding]

I would connect that hard drive to another system as a secondary disk (not the boot disk) and nuke it there, then reconnect.

 

[Mercutio]

A lot of disk tools seem to puke on disks formatted with Vista. I am not sure why.

Going through TrueImage's "Add New Disk" wizard works though.

 

[Clocker]

Whoops. The Vista disk I have is only x64. No wonder it won't work.

 

[CougTek]

A lot of disk tools seem to puke on disks formatted with Vista. I am not sure why.

Puking on Vista is a matter of principles. I'm sure disk tools do it by instinct.

You would have had a lot of fun trying to make Aero work on a Ti200. With the hardware you listed above, you would have more success just installing WinXP and then adding the Vista theme for XP that is floating around the Net. Same visual effects ; only a fraction of the memory used.

 

[Clocker]

As I stated, I'm doing some testing and other things with the system.

Looks like the Promise SATA150 TX2 controller card isn't supported Windows Home Server, it can't find the drive attached to it during install. :-(

 

[ddrueding]

Well I'm having problems with dynamic arrays above 2TB. Even if I use the GUID method instead of MBR; it still goes offline after a reboot. I settled on creating arrays of 1.5TB (2x 750GB) and distributing the data.

 

[Onomatopoeic]

A lot of disk tools seem to puke on disks formatted with Vista. I am not sure why.

Going through TrueImage's "Add New Disk" wizard works though.

The problem is the GPT (GUID Partition Table) that Vista is using. Older disc utilities understand the MBR structure, but don't understand the GPT structure. GPT is default with 64-bit installations of Windows XP, 2K3 Server, and Vista. 32-bit Win2K3/R2 also does GPT. GPT is a lot more capable and resilient than the ancient MBR.