Vista - Fail to complete vista business install

Hi,

My target system is:
Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop
1GB RAM
80GB Fujitsu (MHT2080A) Hard Disk
DVD drive (don't recall the model)
ATI X300 64MB graphics
Broadcom NIC.
Onboard Intel Pro 2200 Wireless/Toshiba Bluetooth/Broadcom modem.
Wireless, Bluetooth and Modem are turned off in the BIOS, all other BIOS
settings are default.

I have been attempting to install Vista Business 32bit OEM on this machine
as a clean build (new partition and format from the Vista install process)
for a couple of days now with little or no success.

My most successful install is described here.......
Boot from the DVD,
delete partition,
new partition,
format,
Tried putting product key in and not putting it in,
copy files,
expand files,
reboot
All work as expected.
After reboot = black screen with white cursor for a while, leave this to do
it's thing and another reboot ensues.
After reboot = Completing install for a while, eventually Vista reqests me
to enter my user info.
This results in a Please Wait... screen with seemingly permanent hard disk
activity. I have left this for over 3 hours and eventually gave up and
powered the laptop off.
After subsequent startup I get a black screen with a white cursor and no
hard disk activity. No desktop, BUT when I leave the screen as is after a
short while (maybe 10 mins) I see a screen saver, and when left longer the
laptop sleeps, so this would indicate some Vista processes are running.

On some other install attempts I see constant reboots during the black
screen with white cursor phase between the file expand and completing install
phases. If I then boot without the DVD and press F8 I can try all the options
with no success. If I boot from the DVD and Repair, then try turning off auto
restart on error it makes no difference.

Question:
Apart from boot logging into ntbtlog.txt which I have tried (nothing obvious
in there), what else can I check - logs etc.....

Regards,
JS
--
Sys Admins do it the hard way