Windows Vista Dell's Vista Reinstall DVD.

Well, for many reasons, I removed Vista; it turned out not to be a good idea, and so I tried to use the Dell reinstall DVD that came with my laptop.

The install appears to go smoothly, until I notice that despite "Your computer will reboot several times ", it hasn't done so once. It then finishes installing, the screen goes black, and nothing. It was set to boot from the DVD drive, so I can't understand why that happened.

Now, when I try to install on partition 3 of my disk, with plenty of space, it says it "doesn't meet the criteria for installation ". Who knows what those are...

I may just end up having to get a new DVD if I want it at all, as it's possible that my drive is slowly mangling the discs - certainly sounds like it.

Does anyone know any way I can solve this?

 

Here is a search at Dell:
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=unable+criteria+installation&cat=sup

 

KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933925