Just bought a new system Q6600 OCZ SLI Ready 4x1GB 2x WD Caviar 250GB ThermalTake Armour LCS case and ... a LiteOn 20Speed Sata DVD Drive.
And then spent 24 hours non stop trying to install Vista - from a SATA DVD drive - x64 XP professional and Server 2003 R2 x64 worked fine ... but after first reboot Vista would not come up..just re-boted - no error message.
Tried everything (I thought) till I realised I was using the Sata DVD -so tried the old PATA DVD drive and hey presto - it all worked......
I wasted day older and a little wiser ......