Thanks for the slipstreaming advice. Alas, while setup got the disk size correct, Windows still failed to load the first time. It gave the error message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <Windows root>\System32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of this file. I tried the install 3 times with the same result. This is an MSI board and the drive is SATA operating on a 4 channel nvidia SATA controller. I am guessing now that I am tangled up in the bios. Again thanks for the replies and if you have other thoughts I would appreciate them.