install wont finnish

hi i have a problem and need some advice. i installed vista and it failed to
finnish the install. so i deleted it and did a reinstall. the same thing
happened when it hits the only reboot it says rebooting to finnish the
install. but it never does and now i cant get into it and have 2 entries in
the boot menu for vista and one for xp wich i can get into as that is what i
am useing to post this. but i have to watch and do an up arrow fast on the
boot or it goes to the vista entry before i can hit the up arrow if i wait to
do it when i see the list.

i think the problem is caused by a glitch i have even with xp where my pc
will boot but all i get is a black screen. then i have to hit reset and
reboot . when i do that it will go into xp normaly other then the menu cause
i shut it down imporperly. have never figured out what causes that. is only
thing i can think of though that might have messed up the vista install. hope
some one has an idea.

i have a gigabyte mother board with nivida chipset. an nvida video card and
a 250 gig sata drive partationed into 3 partiations. and a 10 gig ide drive.
also have a dvd drive and a dvd rewrite drive. have 512 megs of main memorry.
and 128 min on vid card.


any help apprecated. i am at the repartation refromat and reload xp then
vista. about 3 days then i try that route.

thanks for any and all suggestions.