Installing Vista, getting error msg

[Rikitikitivi]

So I have a dell latitude 6430 laptop and I just installed a new hard drive. Installation of Vista started normally, I'm using a new CD, then I got a message that said Windows could not complete the installation, to install Windows on this computer restart the installation. The problem is that I can't get past this screen- when I try to restart the same screen just comes up, I can't access anything else on the disc. Someone please help, I have no idea what to do, my son broke my wife's laptop, dropped it right on the hard drive, things were going so smooth until this.

[Rikitikitivi]

To now further complicate things, and irritate the hell out of me, I can't get off the safe mode screen. I followed something I read and switched the hard drive settings from raid to ahci then ata, didn't help at all, so I switched back to raid. Now all I can get is the screen giving the option for safe mode or normal, I can't even bring up the windows message. I can't do safe mode, and if I try normal I just end back in the same place.

[Appzalien]

Maybe if you were to set the bios to AHCI first and then reinstall Vista you might solve your problem. Re-installation takes about 30min, so you can always try installing again from the different modes to find the one that works. If your Vista disk doesn't have the correct AHCI drivers for your HDD or chipset on it, that could cause the failure. I had a system once that was AHCI capable but I couldn't install in anything but IDE emulation mode. Then afterwords I switched it to AHCI following directions I found with a search for my model number. If I remember correctly it required a registry change and then a reboot into the bios to switch to AHCI.

[zumonas]

Have you tried re-installing Vista?