Vista 64 installation taking forever, HP

Been attempting to fix an old HP 9400f for awhile now, used to blue screen alot so I checked the ram and found a bad stick and went about replacing it. Following that I reset the BIOS and went about business as usual. The problem is, is that after actually getting the thing running again, I decided to format the main drive and reinstall vista, and now I feel as though I am stuck in limbo indefinately.

The vista installation has gone fine so far, it has brought up a full screen plastering information about this one time setup, do not shutdown the Computer, etc etc, computer may reboot numerous times. Please shutdown or Reboot when the installation directs you to do so. the Windows Out of Box Experience program is up, hidden behind this full screen.
Now, it has loaded windows, as its pretty easy to simply tab away from the full screen image, and the windows partition for my drive is only 16 or 48gb (Of a maximum of 750, so the partition is sorta retarded but i'll fix that later) and well, windows installed correctly, I feel kinda happy about that. But its rebooted serveral times, and this one wizard install screen comes up that strikes fear into me.

After rebooting, and loading windows, it does not go to desktop and instead goes to a white screen with two folders, and a file or two passing from the left to the right. The mouse pointer is on the screen and it is not frozen, and the keyboard is responding to caplocks and such, but this screen has been up for a total of six hours now on this particular reboot, and it is pretty damn concerning.

My real question is, should I let this thing putter away and sort itself out, or should I shut the system down and reboot, and hope it goes through this process without getting itself stuck in limbo.