Can't load Vista Home Premium 64 bit

[55wed55]

I just built a computer (first one for me) everything went good until I tried to install Vista Home Premium 64 bit.
Do I need to format my hard drive before I try to install Vista. The hard drive is a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM. It didn’t come with any software and I can’t find anything about formatting it for Vista.

What happens is that I put the Vista disk in. It says it’s loading the files and a bar graft shows then I get the words Microsoft Corporation with another bar graft. Then the screen goes dark.

Can anyone help me?

 

[GhislainG]

What happens if you wait for several minutes?

 

[grieve]

+1 ^

format the disk, just fdisk it... then install.

 

[stoner133]

Really we need more info on the system. If the BIOS is set corectly once Vista Setup begins you can format the disk from there. How much RAM is in the system? How do you have the hard drive set in the BIOS. Any secondary RAID controller on the board that may be on with nothing connected to it. Also the processor speed does effect how long it takes to load Vista Setup.

 

[55wed55]

Here's some more info.
Gigabte EP45-UD3p Motherboard
4 GB of Ram OCZ DDR2
I just have one hard drive and the CD/DVD installed.
An ASUS EAH4850 TOP Video Card
500 wat OCZ Power Suppy

When I go into the BIOS Set Up and then into the Standard CMOS Features the CD/DVD is listed as IDE Channel 0 Master [TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S
The Hard Drive is listed as IDE Channel 1 Master [WDC WD50000AAKS-00A7B

THey both are set to [auto]
The Hard Drive Capacity is 500 GB
Cylinder 65535
Head 16
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 65534
Sector 255

I do not have a floppy

Vista has never loaded far enough for me to see anything about formating the hard drive.

 

[55wed55]

Also the processer is a Intel Core 2 Duo E8500

 

[GhislainG]

Then you have a more basic problem that needs to be resolved. Can you try with a different video card? Even an old PCI card would work for that test. Are the temperatures and voltages OK in the BIOS (PC Health Status)?

 

[55wed55]

I finally got it to load. Not sure if this was the problem but this is what I did.

I changed the SATA connections. I put the Hard Drive in 0 and the CD/DVD in 1. Went into the bios and made sure the CD/DVD was the first bootable device.

It worked except when I got into Vista it listed the hard drive as 127 GB to load Vista into. I showed the rest of the hard drive in another partition but after I got Vista loaded it only shows 127 GB.

Any suggestions. My drive is 500GB.

 

[GhislainG]

I also own that motherboard and I installed Vista 64 on a 640GB disk. Mine was properly formatted and I have a single 596GB partition. Did you format the disk using Vista at installation time or was it already formatted using a different OS?

 

[55wed55]

When I got to that section in Vista the drive was split into two partitions. I clicked on the one that Vista suggested (which was the small one) to use. I also tried to format the larger partition but it wouldn't let me. Is there anyway I can do this now?

 

[GhislainG]

If the small partition where Vista is installed is the first one, you can delete the second partition and then expand the first one.

 

[55wed55]

Could you explain how I do that?

Can I do that within Vista or do I need to put the disk in and do a repair?

Thanks

 

[GhislainG]

You always do that within Vista.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html

Just make sure that Vista is loaded on the first partition. Then follow the steps that he performed to increase the size of Disk1. Note that you'll have to right-click the partition to be deleted and delete it before you can increase the size of the first partition.

Your hard disk didn't come partitioned. This happened because you used tools other than Vista to partition it in the first place. That step was totally useless as you never have to format or partition a hard disk before installing an OS.

 

[55wed55]

Thanks ghislaing. I followed the directions and it worked great. I now have all 500 GB.