Vista - Vista Installation taking forever

Hello i have been trying to install vista booting off the disk (you can see why here).all of a sudden the vista disk and repair disk have just slowed down . its takes half an hour til you can even choose what you want to do. I click install and haven't got any farther than Please wait. its really annoying and i need to reinstall windows.
i dont see any reason for it to be slow. i've got 3gb ram and 2ghz processor .

Please help

Interesting and frustrating problem....

Try this:
Download Ubuntu or Fedora (Linux), and put in on a flash to make it bootable. From there, plug it in, and boot from it from BIOS. If you can boot just fine, try using the "Install to HDD" icon on the desktop there to install it to your HDD. This will require a reformat, but thats good since you are reinstalling anyways. If this install works well, and quickly, then we know your drives are all good. (If you do this from a CD first, and it still is slow, then try it off a flash drive. Your drive could be bad)

~Lordbob

my stuffs on the hardrive.and I dont want to format

Hi Fastboy42,

Restart your computer and enter your BIOS. Check what mode your optical drive is using - it sounds as though it is in PIO mode. This is extremely slow, and the setting it should be using is DMA. Try resetting the mode to that, exit saving changes, reboot and try again. If this doesn't work, then you might have to reset the BIOS to its factory defaults, either by means of the motherboard jumper or by removing the battery. Speaking of this battery, if you have had your system for a while then it might be worth considering replacing this component. They are usually a flat button cell, type CR2032.

Thanks dwarf. i cant see any option to change optical drive mode. also i have a laptop,toshiba satellite pro l300 where would i find the battery?

Thanks, Fastboy42. Could you please let us know the full model number as there are 32 models in this range.

toshiba satellite pro l300 PSLB1A-01L019

Either way , ive decided to buy this
So i can easily backup my files . I would still like to try dwarfs idea. If only i knew how.

Do you not know how to get into BIOS?

~Lordbob

Of course I know how to get into the bios.
I just don't see an option for changing the optical drive mode and I don't know where the battery for the bios is in my laptop.