Installation x32 Professional fails on ASRock ION330

Hello.

my CD/DVD drive (LiteOn DS(-)8A3S) is not recognized by Windows 7 Pro x32. See original topic here.

Compact description:

I just got my brand new Intel Atom "server" from ASRock. And tried to installed Windows 7 Professional x32 on it. The ASRock ION 330 should be Windows 7 compatible, see official badge on the website.
It failed out of the reason seen on the screenshot. It misses CD/DVD-drive drivers.

What I tried to solve the issue:

01). Rescanning the Windows DVD
02). Putting in the ASRocks "Nettop Series" CD, which came with the Accessories
03). Without any CD/DVD inside
04). Changing the PIO mode (to "0" or "Disabled"(?))
05). I unchecked the "Hide drivers" box, yet didn't find any proper drivers
06). I set the BIOS settings to default
07). I updated the BIOS to v. 1.60
08). I set the BIOS settings to default again
09). I checked the SATA settings
10). I had the CD\DVD drive set as the first boot device as well as second boot device - no difference
11). I set the SATA settings from IDE to AHCI - didn't help
12). I contacted the ASRock and LiteOn e-mail support, they provided me with some of the above mentioned solutions - yet they couldn't provide me with drive drivers at all!


Additional info: I got the Win 7 RTM via MSDN and burned the image on a Sony DVD+R. I checked the ISO (after a move) for the MD5-hash (correct), although I had none provided from Microsoft. Installation of Windows XP SP2 x32 starts properly. Though I don't know yet if this'll help in my error tracking?

Thanks for your help in advance!


Kind regards

I updated the topic to reflect my efforts. Please also note the attached screenshots.

No idea anyone? Btw.: I doubt installing Win XP would help as you will have to install Win 7 over XP, so you won't be able to start it from Win XP itself. The only thing I might try to put it on the desktop and then run from there, but when will this part of the HDD then be wiped?

@theog: How do you mean?? *confused* The ION330 has only 2 GB of RAM and the Windows 7 installation I use is x32, so it doesn't support more than 3 GB anyway. Or did I miss anything?

Still, it isn't even about Windows, I can't even install it because of this driver issue.