Thought I'd drag this thread back up as I've just installed Vista Home Premium on my PC....
Basically I was short of a valid XP licence so thought I'd take the plunge on Vista instead - via ebay copies are not too dear, certainly a lot better than the high street, so it seemed like a reasonable option.
Did a compatability check on my pc to make sure it was up to the task - no problems. Clean full installation; got to the first reboot and it just hung. Bugger. Repeated two or three times, same result. Did a bit of browsing on the web and it seems that this is a problem that has affected a lot of users since the early beta releases, and MS has obviously failed to nail it so that it still affects the retail version

. Various possible reasons were put forward on the forums, from hardware conflicts/incompatabilities (graphics cards, multiple sticks of memory etc), various drivers/software (anti-virus, SATA controllers, BIOS versions etc.), and even 'having your monitor plugged in at the moment of the first reboot'! It seems like some folk have been stuck on this one for weeks, whilst others have had no problems.
Anyway, I uninstalled my AV, disconnected all USB devices yadayadaya, no difference, still hung. Reset all my BIOS values to default - hey presto, we're in (thank God)! Not sure what it didn't like as I haven't gone back through them yet. Reinstalled a few drivers/apps - told me that my McAfee was 'incompatible', so installed it anyway, but it really is 'incompatible' to the point of causing explorer.exe to die shortly after startup! So, safe mode uninstall of my AV software that has still got about 6 months of updates paid for

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Anyway, seem like Vista is overly sensitive to your hardware configuration and BIOS settings, so if you're planning to install it it the near future, be warned....it might not go smoothly!
Still, I'm up and running, importing backed up mail messages/settings all OK, so things are looking up

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