6 months ago I posted a half rant/half truce with Windows Vista. I'd bought Windows Vista Ultimate thinking great, going to install Window Vista on my desktop experience Aero on my new 27" screen but sadly it didn't install. Infact the install itself just up and crashed everytime and just kept hanging on the same spot. I'd checked my hardware and they we're all Vista compatible, so I was a little baffled. But in this process some good came out of it. I managed to obtain second hand laptop from a friend and I installed Windows Vista on that instead and concluded I will leave my desktop which was born into the world on XP, alone and content with Windows XP running through it's veins. But now I've decided to continue the fight to install Windows Vista on my troublesome desktop

6 months on I've decided to evaluate the situation and thought. I paid money for this operating system and yet im restricted to installing it on one of my machines, because the other won't install it. Back in 2005 when my PC was built the hardware was designed for Windows XP and it runs flawlessly I've had only about two Blue Screen's (BSOD) in it's life time and I would also like to add that my Laptop which has been running Windows Vista for 6 months has not blue screened once so to all the Vista haters, Service pack 1 really helped and you bashing it for the reason "It crashes alot" is ignorant. But I've checked out my hardware for my desktop and the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor reports no issues on any hardware but the component it doesn't is my Desktops Drive. I currently have a Maxtor 80 GB SATA Drive installed, a couple of months ago I went troubleshooting but didn't come across anything specific to my issues but recently, I found a great community called the The Vista Forums and posted my problem on there, I got alot of responces from people (And I would just like to extend my gratitude to everyone who's been helping me troubleshoot. You guys rock!) but in the end the problem was identified as a BIOS/Drive problem. This made sense but I got my confirmation of this problem when I saw a similar thread to my problem see this thread:

http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=15264

A similar hanging occurance is happening with this persons installation and community members have responded and have determined together that it's combination of problems with Windows Vista installling on SATA Drives (Although some community members have reported problems with IDE Drives) and Windows Vista itself not being able to select the correct drives for certain SATA and IDE drives. In actual fact when the installer hangs its because Vista couldn't find the driver for the specific drive being installed on and just hangs as a result. Now community members over at The Vista Forums have posted some solutions which include changing the BIOS setting of SATA operation to ATA instead of AHCI others have been to load the Silcon RAID driver for the drive (Which I have on a floppy but of the course on the way to finding a solution my floppy drive doesn't work so I can't do anything with it) But changing my drive should be the big test and hopefully solve my problem altogether

It seems to me that after 6 months (Even though I'd gave up searching for a few months to find a solution for while) Im fairly confident that my Drive is causing my Windows Vista installation problems. According to my knowledge I currently have a SATA Drive but in couple of weeks I will be changing this to IDE Drive. Luckily my motherboard has 2x IDE channels so my motherboard supports IDE drives so in the next couple of weeks I will be swapping drives and hoping this will solve my problems. Which would be nice because im loving Windows Vista on my laptop and Im started to develop the habit of trying to perform Vista shortcuts or tasks in Windows XP (Which of course most don't work and it takes me a good few seconds to realise why!)

Have you had Vista problems, similar to mine and other peoples? We're you able to install Windows Vista on a SATA Drive? If so why not comment back and share it with me and our readers. It would be interesting to find others who have had similar problems. Since I found out that my problem was generally relative to SATA Drive issues I've met alot of other people with these issues so im not alone in getting Vista to work on a SATA Drive!

Again I would like to thank The Vista Forums for there help in troubleshooting my Windows Vista Installation problems. If you have a tech related question I'd suggest aheading over to them, because there a very helpful community. Whether your a PC user running Windows or a Mac user running OS 10 there community is very diverse and there's a mixture of people on Linux, Windows and OS 10 which have the knowledge to help you with just about any compute related problem!

Useful links:

My Windows Installer Problems Thread on TVF
Another Windows Vista Thread relating to a installation hang on a certain spot (Contains solutions to fix)