Windows 7 - Installation Frozen... But not.

Alright, so I set up my external hard drive to install windows, I've done this before. However this time, I get it booted, it starts to load windows, then the weird flashy windows 7 logo pops up, starts loading. It finishes loading, then I see a screen with a green/blue wallpaper with a plant-like thing on it. I can move my mouse around, but there's nothing on the screen, like... Nothing's going on, no HDD activity, nothing.

Whats going on here, and how can I fix this? I'm trying to go from Vista 32 to Windows 7 64

EDIT: My installation stops at disk.sys on the safe mode install.

You can't upgrade from x86 to x64.

Are you trying to clean install or upgrade?

I know this really late, but I ran into the same problem. I am not sure what solved it, but I think it was one of two things:

(A) Waiting long enough

or

(B) Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE

Good luck!

If you are booted into WinPE (the windows 7 setup program) you can always press Shift+F10 to launch a command line, and then type in taskmgr and press enter to launch task manager and see if something has hung up.