Okay, pulled the plug. Turned off, and when I restarted I went into setup and switched my boot order to try the HDD first. That went okay until halfway through the windows welcome screen (with the big window and the status bar, right after the 'dell' bios setup screen thing) and then halfway through the welcome screen it stopped.

Then, I got a light blue (NOT the scary blue screen) screen that said 'setup is being restarted', and it took me to almost right back to where I had turned it off. It had gotten frozen with 33 minutes left in the 'install' part, and now it went back and started the install back at 39 minutes (read my previous posts if that makes no sense, the 'minutes' are explained there)

OKay, so.... crap.

Yep, I follow you. And did it stop again with the rundll32 msg as before or just freeze at 34 mins?
During Setup you can press Shift+F10 to enter the cmd mode once the progress has reached a certain stage... Installing Devices. Check in C:\Windows\setupapi.log for any logged problem... it will appear at the very bottom of the file. At the cmd prompt just type ...
C:\Windows\setupapi.log ..the log will open in notepad. If that does work then you can also get into My Computer by going File > Open... in that notepad. If the notepad will not open then simply list the file in the cmd window -enter...
type C:\Windows\setupapi.log |more
Say what you find....

Heya, crunchie...

I see you gerbil . How is it?

Orright. I've switched my focus after a break just sos I pick up on other stuff. Hope the grub stomping is still going well.

Now, after the 'windows is restarting setup' page, it just goes black and the mouse pointer appears and can move but that's all that's going on. It's been about 5 minutes so far of nothing. I'm going to restart it and switch my boot to CD

Still nothing. Now I can't even get back to the install page, it just freezes.

Like a charm

Woliver, ...damn... but I was expecting failure on this one. I think you are going to have to go back to my earlier post and clean the drive of whatever malware was interfering with the Repair. It would possibly do the same thing to a fresh installation. On that point, if you had room enough on the drive to create another partition by shifting a partition boundary then you could try a fresh installation into that. But as I pointed out earlier, it is the job of a decent worm or virus to infect, even across partition boundaries. But if you wish to try it, and I would if it was my machine, GParted 3.7.7 or Parted-Magic-3.0 would be the tools of choice. For me. You make a live cd by burning the iso of choice, and it is bootable. And simple as. Help or guides are on the net.

Thanks I will try. Will post back with results...

Actually, first, I am going to take it to an IT guy my friend just met. If he can figure it out, I will post back how, otherwise, I will try your suggestion. THanks for trying everyone, see you in a few days.