System crashed and Vista won't reinstall

I have a new machine, nvidia 8800gst card. I made a fatal error and took my
external hard drive and attached it to my daughter's Apple so she could share
some music I had. When I returned the external drive to my machine, it
froze. I rebooted my machine and got a message reading, "there is no
operating system". I inserted my Vista DVD with hopes of doing a
repair....didn't see the repair link and ended up doing a full
reinstall.....losing my stuff of course......only to have it not recognize my
video card or my monitor. I did finally get both recognized after numerous
attempts, both showing in the Device Manager as working properly. All seemed
well until I walked away from the machine for awhile and it was down when I
returned. I loaded in safe mode and tested the Windows Media Centre which
said that the video card was not capable of running it. Again if I leave the
machine unattended it shuts down and refuses to load.

How can I proceed to reinstall Vista, ensuring a clean install? Does it
format the drive on it's own? or do I need to do something to ensure it
installs without the errors left behind from the crash?

thanks.....

You do have to select reformat when you select the partition on which to
install. Under advanced if I recall

"Clybella" <Clybella@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5EC4FB96-BB30-43DD-940E-B7C168BF4987@microsoft.com...
>I have a new machine, nvidia 8800gst card. I made a fatal error and took
>my
> external hard drive and attached it to my daughter's Apple so she could
> share
> some music I had. When I returned the external drive to my machine, it
> froze. I rebooted my machine and got a message reading, "there is no
> operating system". I inserted my Vista DVD with hopes of doing a
> repair....didn't see the repair link and ended up doing a full
> reinstall.....losing my stuff of course......only to have it not recognize
> my
> video card or my monitor. I did finally get both recognized after
> numerous
> attempts, both showing in the Device Manager as working properly. All
> seemed
> well until I walked away from the machine for awhile and it was down when
> I
> returned. I loaded in safe mode and tested the Windows Media Centre which
> said that the video card was not capable of running it. Again if I leave
> the
> machine unattended it shuts down and refuses to load.
>
> How can I proceed to reinstall Vista, ensuring a clean install? Does it
> format the drive on it's own? or do I need to do something to ensure it
> installs without the errors left behind from the crash?
>
> thanks.....

Thanks for the speedy response! I found the "format" button and noticed the
size of the free space was dwindling after several attempts to reload. Have
it attempting load again now. Hopefully this time is the charm.

thanks again, very much,



"John Barnes" wrote:

> You do have to select reformat when you select the partition on which to
> install. Under advanced if I recall
>
> "Clybella" <Clybella@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:5EC4FB96-BB30-43DD-940E-B7C168BF4987@microsoft.com...
> >I have a new machine, nvidia 8800gst card. I made a fatal error and took
> >my
> > external hard drive and attached it to my daughter's Apple so she could
> > share
> > some music I had. When I returned the external drive to my machine, it
> > froze. I rebooted my machine and got a message reading, "there is no
> > operating system". I inserted my Vista DVD with hopes of doing a
> > repair....didn't see the repair link and ended up doing a full
> > reinstall.....losing my stuff of course......only to have it not recognize
> > my
> > video card or my monitor. I did finally get both recognized after
> > numerous
> > attempts, both showing in the Device Manager as working properly. All
> > seemed
> > well until I walked away from the machine for awhile and it was down when
> > I
> > returned. I loaded in safe mode and tested the Windows Media Centre which
> > said that the video card was not capable of running it. Again if I leave
> > the
> > machine unattended it shuts down and refuses to load.
> >
> > How can I proceed to reinstall Vista, ensuring a clean install? Does it
> > format the drive on it's own? or do I need to do something to ensure it
> > installs without the errors left behind from the crash?
> >
> > thanks.....
>
>

Clybella wrote:
> I have a new machine, nvidia 8800gst card. I made a fatal error and took my
> external hard drive and attached it to my daughter's Apple so she could share
> some music I had...

There are safer ways to share files ) OS X has SAMBA already included,
for example -- that's the standard way to share files between Windows and
unix-based machines. If your Mac has its SAMBA server properly configured
you can then use the regular My Network Places window in Vista to access
any directories on the Mac which you've configured as 'shared'.

Google will give you more info on SAMBA than you want to know.