failed to boot after install, blue screen prior to log in screen

i was doing a fresh install of vista ultimate. i have 4gbs of memory on my laptop. when i performed the install, all seemed well until the first reboot. that is when i got the microsoft and the percentage level indicator and bang, BLUE SCREEN and immediate reboot so i couldn't see the issue.

So i spent a few days racking my head over all this garbage. i ran knoppix from a cd and all was fine. i installed ubuntu onto the hard drive and all was fine. Then i finally stumbled upon the fix.

So then i thought maybe it was the memory. Everyone was saying that when they knocked down from 4 to anything less all ran well. Not for everyone. Then i thought ok, since vistal premium was running fine prior to ultimate install something else had to happen. then i installed premium. still had the issue. Then i remembered i performed a bios upgrade. so i stumbled upon this little piece of knowledgable material:

1. Enter the BIOS Setup Menu by pressing F2 when thecomputer starts
2. Go to "Onboard Devices"
3. Go to "Flash Cache Module" and disable it (turn it "off").
4. Go to "SATA Operation" and switch from "AHCI" to "ATA".
5. Save and Exit the BIOS Setup and then install your OS

That did the trick for me.