Vista - Vista will not install

I was really looking forward to trying out Vista Beta 2. I downloaded it the
day after it was released. I happened to have a brand new 250 GB hard drive
on order from Newegg. When it arrived, I immediately started to setup Vista.
I formated the new drive and I was ready to create a dual boot setup.

The first hurdle I came to was when I attempted to boot from the Vista DVD.
Whenever I tried this, I would get a blue screen STOP error saying that I
should remove any newly installed hardware, run a memory test, etc. Well, the
only newly installed hardware is the new hard drive, which works fine. I did
a memory test. First with the one that appearently comes with the Vista
setup, and then MemTest86. My RAM is fine.

So, I tried running the install from XP. It took about five minutes to get
to where I could actually do something. It seemed frozen. Eventually it
started working. I entered all of the necessary info and got to the point
where it was "Copying Files". It finished with that and moved onto "Expanding
files". It was not long after that, that it rebooted for the first time, and
in my case, the last. After rebooting, I got a screen with the Vista
background, an hourglass, and the text, "Installing Windows". The mouse moved
once in a while and the DVD drive was spinning up in seemingly regular
intervals. I figured it was doing it's thing.

Well.... I came back an hour later and it was STILL on the same screen. It
didn't seem to have done anything. I didn't want to take a chance at messing
up the install so I just let it run. This was at about 8 PM. Later, at about
11 PM, something happened! the progress screen showed up and said it was
expanding files! I thought, "oh, it should be done before too long". It's now
2 AM.... Still expanding files. I went to bed. I got up at 10 AM. Guess
what.... STILL expanding files....

Needless to say, I restarted the PC and was greeted with the Vista boot menu
giving me the option to rollback the Vista install or boot an earlier version
of Windows. I chose to roll back and it did it's thing. I rebooted into XP
and all was normal.

The first try was a no'go. It sat there for a total of 14 hours and got
nowhere. The next day I tried again. I burned a new copy. I tried booting
from the DVD, just in case, for some strange reason, it might work. Of course
it didn't. I started the install from XP again. This time I did not feel like
staring at it for hours on end. I went to bed. The next morning it was on the
"Installing Windows" screen with the hour glass, nothing else. It didn't even
get as far as before!

I can't say I'm not dissapointed. I want to try Vista, see what all the talk
is about, and hopefuly provide some useful feedback. Does anyone have any
idea why Vista won't boot from the DVD? The problem seems to stem from Vista
booting without XP. Whenever Vista setup is running in XP it works fine but
as soon as it ventures out on it's own, after the first reboot, it hangs. Any
ideas?

Here are my detailed system specs:

CoolerMaster Centurion 2 Case
ASUS A7V333 Mother Board
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
768 MB PC2700 DDR Mushkin RAM
80 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital Ultra Hard Drive
250 GB 7200 RPM Seagate Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Leadtek GeForce 6600GT
NEC ND3550A DVD-RW
Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM
Sound Blaster Audigy ES
Windows XP Home Edition (Service Pack 2)
Cable Internet Connection (uncapped)
Enlight 360 Watt Power Supply