I've tried booting directly from the DVD, running Setup on the DVD from WinXP x64, and running Setup from XP x64 after copying the files to the hard drive. Booting from the DVD hangs almost immediately after "loading files", and running Setup from XP x64 has the identical result of hanging shortly after Setup starts.

I've reported it as a bug, and in line with the Beta Clent suggestions, sent them the Setupact.log and Setuperr.log files (Setuperr.log is empty). Setupact.log makes interesting reading though, the last entry is 1½ minutes after the first one, and that's after letting Setup run for 1hr 15 minutes.

JJ, I've never had Vista installed on this machine, which is newly built (with the specific intention of using Vista as the main OS on it when it goes gold ).