Win7 clean install won't complete

I repeat,
"installer" will install to the partition you mark as ACTIVE

I've done this numerous times.

That's probably because you selected the Active partition to install onto.

OK - so when I get to the install screen to choose where to install win7 I simply click NEXT and the installer will choose the SYSTEM partition irrespective of which letter it was assigned.

However I presume it is still best for the SYSTEM partition to be assigned as "C" ?

When you declare a partition as Active, then you have told Win7 that this is the "System" partition. Try it out if you have an extra external HDD laying around to play with.

ibex said:

OK - so when I get to the install screen to choose where to install win7 I simply click NEXT and the installer will choose the SYSTEM partition irrespective of which letter it was assigned.

However I presume it is still best for the SYSTEM partition to be assigned as "C" ?

True to the first sentence and myself I prefer for the SYSTEM partition to be assigned as "C" but necessary it isn't.

Here's where I'm up to

Memtest ran for 12+ hours no errors

Output of List volume

Volume 0 F UDF DVD-ROM
volume 1 D NTFS partition 250GB Healthy
volume 2 C NTFS partition 501GB Healthy
volume 3 E NTFS partition 645GB Healthy

Volume 1 is the ACTIVE volume
Running the install again from here

The "Where do you want to Install Windows?" screen shows

Disk 0 Partition 1 250.6GB System
Disk 0 Partition 2 501.3 GB Primary
Disk 0 partition 3 645.4 GB Primary

partition 1 has come up selected by the installer so I am just choosing NEXT

Let's see what happens ...

Not so successful. Now back to rebooting during the "updating registry settigs" phase.

SUCCESS of sorts.

I now have a working win7 installation.

The change I made was to replace the 1.5TB drive with and old 80GB drive. I removed all the partitions and let the installer decide what to do with the disk.

End result - the disk has two volumes,
C: 76GB
System reserved 100MB

I am still totally confused about why the 1.5TB disk was so problematic so I guess I still need advice on how to properly set up that disk. Is cloning the disk and then extending the C: drive and adding in other drives the best way to go.

I also need to go back and turn on the disabled components of the motherboard. Do I just do these one at a time and reboot each time to see what Win7 does with it?