Vista Install Completes but "disk error" on 1st Reboot

I am trying to install Vista Beta 2 on an older Dell PIII 800 mhz machine. It has 640 mb of RAM, 120 gb HD. I get through the entire installation and on reboot, I get "disk error", ALT+CTL+DEL to restart. I've tried numerous scenarios, XP upgraded w/Vista, XP on C: and Vista on D: partitions and vice versa, Vista by itself and newly formated partition, connected and not-connected to the internet, etc. All with the same result. I see some posts about this on the Microsoft Vista newsgroups but no real fix. I also saw something about Vista using some new boot loader. I think that's probably the culprit but what can I do to install it?

I also noticed that when creating and formatting a disk partition under Vista installer, when I click format on a new partition, it hour glasses for about 30 seconds and that's it. That seems odd to me. I would think that you would get some progress bar or complete message of some sort.

Any info greatly appreciated.