I just found a fix for this problem 5min ago. I was getting the same error and was determined to figure it out.. After re installing and getting the same error i looked in the bios. I have 2 hard drives, a 250GB SATA (Vista OS) and a 500GB SATA (Storage). I always plug my hard drives into the sata ports closest to the drive bays. Well turned out the 500GB Storage drive was in Sata port #3 and my 250GB OS hard drive was in SATA port #4. I hooked the 250gb HD into Sata port #1 re installed vista and walla. problem solved.

Kind of dumb really because XP doesn't have this issue.. but it worked for me.