Right place for Vista install help with DDS?

I installed DDS 10 yesterday on a fresh install of XP SP2. Originally my disk was set as one primary, with two logical drives.



I split my primary down in to 3 primary drives. I put a small 50 MB primary right up front and installed OSS to that with no drive letter (is this correct or not?) My system boots to OSS This drive is FAT16

At the very front of all three primary drives is a partition of unallocated space that is 7.8 MB and is inaccessible by DDS10 (what is this portion for?)

The next primary is my C drive with XP installed. OSS will launch XP This drive is NTFS

The next and last part of this original primary partition (before install of DDS 10) is drive V: with the intent of install vista to it. This drive is NTFS.
However, I can't seem to install vista to it no matter which way I go. I try the install from within XP, doing a custom install with no upgrade. It gets to a point and shows all the drives to install to but tells me it cannot install because it needs a file to access my primary HD device controller. Try as I might, I cannot find what Vista wants to continue (I have a 4 CD set for Vista Business).

I also tried using OSS to boot from CD and Vista starts and I have no choice but to select custom (apparently upgrade is from within windows only). However, when it gets to where to install to, Vista shows everything being logical (if that matters) and says there are no volumes in which it can install.

What am I doing wrong?

Beyond the Primary drives are (and this is according to DDS10) 4 logical drives, the first two being Ext3 drives for ubuntu, the 3rd being a Linux Swap drive, I have ubuntu installed on the first of those EXT3 partitions and it boots fine as well from OSS. The last drive is drive D:, this drive is NTFS

Beyond that is 55 GB of unallocated space and at the tail end is a 20 GB Acronis Secure Zone FAT 32 partition (which Vista shows during its search for where to install).

If this is not the right place to ask these question, I'd be obliged if someone could point me in the right direction.

 

I think Vista expects an empty harddrive and sulks if it isn't on the first partition, though I never got around to installing the RC versions of Vista, so may be wrong here.

Colin

 

I got to wondering if it wasn't because I had used DDS10 to create 3 primary drives followed by 2 or 3 logical drives. I say this after thinking back at the attempt to install and noticing how Vista showed the only the first 50 MB HD where OSS resided as the only primary partition and the next two drives were read as logical (although within DDS10 they were set to primary).

I ended up using XP Pro_Sp2 to wipe the drive and repartition installing XP Pro_Sp2 first on the Primary drive of C, then formatting D and installing Vista there. I just don't use OSS, and just let Vista handle the OS loading, which works fine.