Hey Jancsi,
I had the same problem here (i.e. successfully running XP sp2 and freezing
during the same stage installing Beta 2 and build 5472)
My 'fix' for Beta 2 was to stick Ice Bricks underneath the CPU of my laptop.
Unfortunately that wasn't enough for 5472, and for that install I had to put
Ice Bricks underneath the CPU as well as on top of the Keyboards.
Voila!!!!
It seems (at least that's my uneducated guess) that my system is overheating
during the finalizing phase and just halts.
I wish there was a better recovery process (instead of restarting from the
very beginning.) During the next install I'm wondering how much cooler I can
get the thing. It is currently Winter in Australia so I might have to do the
install at night and take the laptop into the outside shed to do the
install.
What Beta testers have to go through ... ha ha ha. No pain, no gain.
ciao,
Sam T.
"Jancsi" <> wrote in message
news

02CF4D9-E2AD-4B39-9F35-...
>I had a massive problem installing Vista on a PC running Windows XP.
> The first installation target was an USB hard drive. OK: Now I know that
> Vista is not "USB enabled". That's a pitty but it's still a beta and may
> be
> it will work someday.
> The second target was a different hard disk (NTFS) in the very same PC.
> This
> worked till the point "finalize setup". After 12 hours of waiting I
> restarted
> the PC. It went directly into a rollback. I tested it three times. Even
> pressing F8 and choosing one of the option ("save mode") didn't do the
> trick
> (also rollback). Booting into the old operating system also made a
> "rollback".
> So I did an installation via XP and after it stopped ad "finalize
> installation" I rebooted the PC using the DVD. This gave me the
> opportunity
> to "repair" the boot record so that the option "Vista (recovered)" was
> visible and I was able to finish the installation process. This was very
> annoying. Anyone here that had also problems with a stop of the
> installation
> during "finalize installation" but has a better idea what to do?