reformat / reinstall fails to complete

Have a Gateway laptop; VISTA home premium;
AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual-Core Processor

This is my friend's laptop has MANY issues (which I've asked advice for on here and we can't fix so I decided the best thing is to format it...my idea and "geek squad's" advice.)

Have run the OEM original Vista Operating System CD that came with laptop for a complete reformat and reinstall but when it is almost done and does it's first "must restart to finish install" it turns off and pc stays on but I see nothing on the screen.

So I pushed the power button off and restarted manually and - of course - it rebooted from CD and started the reformat / reinstall ALL OVER AGAIN.

Got to the same "must restart to finish install" and same thing happened.

Any ideas?

 

I finally decided to take the CD out of the drive - push the power button to turn off then restart manually.

It looks like it's starting up fine -- nothing told me anywhere to take the CD out BEFORE it started back up!

Hopefully it will load everything ok.