Vista - new build, vista install problems

me and my housemate are trying to install Vista Ultimate x64 to a brand new build spec list is:

M2N68 ASUS motherboard
X64 AMD athalon 3.0 gHz x2
250Gb sata hard drive
Sata CD rewriter drive
2GB ram
512mb Nivida 8200 graphics

after weeks waiting for faulty motherboard and processor needing replaced
the parts arrived early this morning at 7am! we eagerly installed it in to our new case and within 30 mins all the parts were in and we popped our Vista Cd in to the drive and set up the bios to read the CD drive etc then the beautiful words
loading windows files came up then the green blue screen then it appeared to stick on the busy cursor forever! we tried our 32 bit vista only to encounter the same problem and then just as we were getting rather frustrated after 1 hour of this screen and i came on this site to find a solution the language select screen has just popped up as i type this and the dreaded please wait screen is now there.... i will keep you posted on the install...but at this rate...it could be weeks!

moral of the story: have patience!

I hate to burst your bubble but this is not the optimal choice of hardware
to run Vista 64.
Unfortunately for AMD fans many motherboard drivers for Vista 32 are less
than optimal and the situation is even worse for Vista 64.
I doubt your motherboard or processor per se are at fault.
I would first make sure that the latest BIOS is accurately installed on your
ASUS mobo. If the BIOS is not properly installed that could be causing your
problem with installing either the 32 or 64 bit OS. Revising the BIOS is
made easy on this mobo but check the instructions carefully.
Also be sure your RAM is not faulty. If you are able then insert the RAM in
another machine and run the Microsoft software RAM test, which should
rapidly identify if the RAM is defective.
I recently configured a machine with that particular motherboard and CPU and
ran into comparable difficulties.
The machine boots and runs but its performance is somewhat disappointing. I
have had similar experiences running Vista on other AMD chipsets: the
machines just do not perform as fast as they should. However vendors like
Acer or HP which sell AMD boxes with Vista seem to get better performance,
which makes me suspect they have better tuned mobo drivers.

well 12 long hours later it seems the problem is the S-ATA Raid drivers dont come installed with windows this was causing the DVD RAM drive to not work for the install, however we plugged an USB external DVD drive in and the install flew through in less than 20 minutes then simply popped the motherboard driver disk in and it installed all the SATA RAID drivers. now everything works a dream and this is by far the fastest machine i have used in a long time.

i am no hardcore user and dont require the performance of a AMD Phenom Quad Core this set up is just beautiful for me although have yet to run the system at high load demand

we had problems when we first tried to build the system, and i returned the motherboard, processor and RAM to ebuyer who tested all three items and found the motherboard and processor to be faulty but the RAM was fine.