Vista won't install on my 9200?

This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.

wrote in message
oups.com...
This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.


I ran into this and it really threw me. Go into the BIOS and go into the
settings for drives. Your machine is likely setup to NOT be RAID. Even if
you only have one drive, Choose RAID, save your settings and try again.

The DVD has the drivers when it is set to RAID (which seems to be the
recommended choice anyway).

Tom

On Apr 7, 2:50 pm, "Tom Scales" wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...





This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.

I ran into this and it really threw me. Go into the BIOS and go into the
settings for drives. Your machine is likely setup to NOT be RAID. Even if
you only have one drive, Choose RAID, save your settings and try again.

The DVD has the drivers when it is set to RAID (which seems to be the
recommended choice anyway).

Tom- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for that Tom, I'll give it a try....................before I do
though (forgive my ignorance), if I set it RAID will I lose everything
on my 2nd hard drive (something in my head keeps niggling at me to do
with mirrored volumes and stuff?).

wrote in message
oups.com...
This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.



I am running Vista on a machine with three SATA drives, and have had the
same problem 1 of the 3 times I performed a clean install. I think the
installer is buggy, because this problem does not always occur in identical
scenarios. In any case, the solution for me was to disconnect all my
secondary HDDs, and boot into the Vista install with only my primary boot
drive connected. Once Vista was installed, there was no problem reconnecting
my secondary drives.

-phil

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Apr 7, 2:50 pm, "Tom Scales" wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...





This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.

I ran into this and it really threw me. Go into the BIOS and go into the
settings for drives. Your machine is likely setup to NOT be RAID. Even
if
you only have one drive, Choose RAID, save your settings and try again.

The DVD has the drivers when it is set to RAID (which seems to be the
recommended choice anyway).

Tom- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for that Tom, I'll give it a try....................before I do
though (forgive my ignorance), if I set it RAID will I lose everything
on my 2nd hard drive (something in my head keeps niggling at me to do
with mirrored volumes and stuff?).



You should not have a problem, but remember the mantra -- backup.

If it is just a data drive and you're not trying to setup dual boot,
disconnect it during the install to be safe.

On Sat, 7 Apr 2007 10:19:06 -0400, "Phil"
wrote:

wrote in message
roups.com...
This is strange.

I received my Vista Business upgrade DVD last week and thought I'd
install it today using the workaround to bypass the upgrade bit and
perform a clean install.

So I pop it in the caddy, boot the machine up and it obediently spins
in to life.........it gets as far as the "insert product key" screen
so I ignore that and click "Next". Vista then pops up a nag screen
telling me what a bad person I am and how I should enter my product
key, yada yada yada...........I click "no" to the "do you want to
enter your product key?" prompt.

So the screen changes; the Upgrade option is greyed out and I only
have the option of (I think?) "Custom".....a message at the bottom of
the screen tells me "the upgrade option has been disabled". Ok, fair
enough, only one button that's clickable, let's click it.

This brings up a list of my volumes (I have two drives, each with
about 10 partitions on).........I should add,that these aren't the
original hard drives so the primary drive doesn't have the hidden Dell
restore/diagnostics partitions.

Anyway, I click on drive c: and Vista complains something about being
unable to find a suitable volume on which to install?

Any pointers? Is this SATA related and I have to load drivers (I
notice there's a "load drivers" option on this screen)?

So far, I'm not impressed with Vista and that's without even getting
as far as installing it!

Any help appreciated.



I am running Vista on a machine with three SATA drives, and have had the
same problem 1 of the 3 times I performed a clean install. I think the
installer is buggy, because this problem does not always occur in identical
scenarios. In any case, the solution for me was to disconnect all my
secondary HDDs, and boot into the Vista install with only my primary boot
drive connected. Once Vista was installed, there was no problem reconnecting
my secondary drives.

-phil


Vista installer is buggy..... naw that can't be. Vista is the WOW OS
I thought grin.