I got my OS drive alive again with Vista - disconnected the power connector to the drive.
So I am still going round in circles.
Tried Dell DVD reinstallation DVD Vista home premium 32 bit slipstreamed with SP1 on a USB stick - same result, crashes after first reboot. tried with and without SATA drivers R155142 and R157988, and with both.
Loaded WinXP again, Checked with Windows 7 upgrade advisor, and that says it has all the necessary drivers included within Win7.
Tried the Dell online diagnostics, the DVD drive failed the spindle test but I am not using the DVD drive for loading Vista 32 and Win7. (and the drive has been working fine for installing Ubuntu, Win XP, SeaTools, etc.)
Tried Windows 7 32bit SP1 on bootable USB, halts either during Collecting Information phase or early in the installation phase.
Tried doing a low level format of the hard drive with Seagate SeaTools for DOS.
Tried clearing CMOS. Tried disconnecting all components from Motherboard, power, and removing Battery.
Tried with and without nVidia video card
Some BIOS settings I am not 100% on are
RAID is Off (default) - (On seems wrong)
Video is set Integrated or PCI Express, alternative is Auto.
Video memory is 64MB (default), alternatives are 16,32,128, Auto, tried with all of these and no improvements.
I am considering updating BIOS, but it did all work before, so a bit reluctant to add another variable.
Any suggestions welcome.