HOWTO Boot? Introduce Yourself! Discuss HOWTO Boot? in the Vista Babble News forums; Good evening my name is simon and I am an idiot! I have the ISO DVD sorted out,but It won't boot! I am trying to install on a ...

[bazbaker]

Good evening my name is simon and I am an idiot!
I have the ISO DVD sorted out,but It won't boot!
I am trying to install on a new HD(160GB)which I don't think has been
formatted correctly.
The HD is from Western Digital and comes with a version 11.1 installation
CD,which formats it with NTFS for XP,but doesn't have an option for any
thing newer than SP2.
any ideas?

[ultralexy]

Simon,
Welcome aboard. Is your hard drive recognized in your BIOS settings? Do you have your boot order set to boot from the DVD first? If those things are in order, you should be able to proceed with the following workaround and successfully install Vista.

There is currently an issue installing Vista on blank or newly formatted hard drives. There is a work around available, and it’s fairly straightforward.

So, in order to install Vista you’ll need to do one of two things. First, you could install XP SP2 and then upgrade to Vista. This method takes a long time.

Or, you could format and partition the drive before you install Vista.

When booted to the Vista CD, don't click on the option to install. Instead, select the option to repair problems with startup. Next select a Windows installation (the list will be empty, just click next), and then choose a tool to run. Choose the Command Prompt.

From the Command Prompt, run Diskpart to set up the partitions on your disk. Once in DISKPART, run these commands:

SELECT DISK 0
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
EXIT

Now, close the command prompt, and click Restart. When the system restarts, Vista will be able to recognize your disk, and you'll be able to install.