A simple question, no simple answer...
The reason in short I suspect has to do with UAC (User Agent Control). I know, your saying "I disabled that", but it isn't that easy.
UAC is a two tiered system that prevents software loaded from within the OS to directly interface with hardware. This prevents Viruses, spyware, and old, incompatible software from making potentially harmful changes to the system. It is also the root cause of the annoying "Confirm or Deny" popups in vista, which is why I suspect you, like everyone else have disabled it.
As I stated earlier, it is a two tiered system (in most cases). The first level is software (the annoying popups), and the second tier is part of the BIOS, which allows UAC to intercept or block unverified process threads. The hardware support is only present on newer motherboards, and is not typically an option that can be disabled.
Here's how it works ideally. You run the installer, Vista asks if this is something you really intended to install. If you say yes, it appends a few bits to memory that tells the hardware to execute the process. If you disable UAC, those bits don't get appended and the hardware doesn't know if it's okay to execute or not. There is usually a built in time delay of 30 seconds to a minute and then it should execute. The problem is old installer packages may send up red flags on any or every action taken by the installer, causing this delay many times over and giving the appearance of a hung install. It is actually working, just being delayed at every step along the way.
Why does this not happen for everyone? Many vista users are running older motherboards (more than 1 year old) and don't have support for UAC on the BIOS level, so windows compensates and approves pretty much anything is the feature is disabled. Vista32 is notorious for flakey UAC execution, Vista64 works much better, this problem should not occur there.
Why does it work on the Work computer? If you are part of a domain in the work place, UAC policies are typically deferred to a group policy manager on the server which approves or denies changes based on a policy set by your admin. This is completely invisible on the end-user system most of the time, so depending on the policies, it would be a non issue. Or, as stated before, that PC may not have the hardware components that create the problem.
There are many, many more other possible issues that could yield the same problems your having, UAC isn't always to blame, but it's the first suspect.
Try turning UAC back on, then reboot and install, approve the install in the pop up window and it should work. If not, let the installer work for a little longer, maybe as much as 2 hours, ignoring windows if it says the program is not responding. Just walk away and see if it finishes. In most cases it will, just in an aggravatingly long time.
You can also run UO from an install on a separate partition, so if you have an XP partition, install it there and the game will run in vista with no problems. If you don't have an XP partition, don't attempt to create one without doing some research, as it will rewrite your MBR and make it impossible to go back to vista. It takes a 3rd party tool to do that, so it's not a practical solution unless you already have it set up for a proper dual boot.
Good luck
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•¤•¤•Arkryal •¤•¤•
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