So, I listen to what Microsoft was saying about all of tremendous improvements made to Office 2007 and Window Vista and I couldn't wait to try it. Good marketing, eh?
First I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, and it advised I needed a new video card, and that I should have a copy of the device driver for my Network Interface Card to use after Vista was installed. New video card procured, and CD with drivers in hand, I figured I was 30 minutes away from experiencing the splendors upgrade heaven. 'Twas not to be. I was installing a clean copy from scratch onto a new hard disk, and the Windows Vista install program spent a very long time (10 to 15 minutes) sitting there was a splash screen, finally letting me pick the language. Then it proclaimed "Required cd/dvd drive device driver is missing" and there was no further progress to be had. A search of the web (on another computer) suggested I needed to have the IDE ATAPI drivers at hand, but that didn't seem right. I unplugged the CD drive (leaving the DVD drive containing Vista installed) and tried again. Same result, but at least I knew it wasn't unhappy with the CD drive.
Finally I removed the DVD drive (a recently acquired LiteOn LH-18A1P) and replaced it with an older model. This time everything worked. There were no abnormally long waits and no complaining. My guess is that the Liteon is too new for the installer, and since it didn't know about my 3Com 3C940 LOM NIC either, it couldn't go out on the web and get updated drivers. So I was almost stuck, only being saved by the stacks of computer equimpment I have lying around, and by the desperation to try anything necessary. After Vista was installed (including the NIC drivers) I swapped back to the LH-18AP1 and it worked fine.
Googling around using the error message text shows that I am not the only one to find this bug. Here's hoping that Microsoft fixes this soon in an updated distribution disk.
UPDATE: It turns out the LiteOn drive didnt' work well after the install. It would read the TOC, but had trouble with actually reading data. Turns out I was using a 40-pin IDE cable and this drive needs an 80-pin cable! So it was user error all along.
