please don't laugh...

karlsnooks said:

We have not achieved our objective.

A suggestion is: show this entire correspondence to one of your techie friends, surely you have one-from work, from church, from the local bar, show that person you computer, your dvd, and I'll bet that person can get you rolling. Some people work better with someone by there side as opposed to following directions over the internet.

Sadly, all two of my techie friends are unreachable (and I'm in a new city)

gregrocker said:

Take the DVD out and try to boot. What exactly does it do and say?

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

What were the GW Scan and DIsk Check results?

No error was found by GWScan.
And the result of the other Qs are at attached as pics.

Dave76 said:

Did you format the partition at the beginning of the installation?

Yes, I did format the partition at the beginning of the installation.

Lordbob75 said:

If you happen to be at Cal Poly, let me know, I can get you fixed up.

Thanks for the offer :)
but I'm on the other side of the country

This error with the DVD removed often means it is not booting past the DVD drive. This is why it cannot reboot into HD during install.

Try setting the HD as first boot device in BIOS setup, then to boot the DVD drive tap the Acer F12 key at bootup to select DVD drive.

Once you do this you can boot the DVD to try the install again to the same partition you've already created and formatted.

gregrocker said:

This error with the DVD removed often means it is not booting past the DVD drive. This is why it cannot reboot into HD during install.

Try setting the HD as first boot device in BIOS setup, then when you need to boot the DVD drive tap the F12 key at bootup on Acer and select DVD drive.

That's what I've been doing (I got tired of reordering boot order via F2)

gregrocker said:

Check now in BIOS setup via F2 just to be sure that HD is set to boot first.

Can you post back a camera snap of the Boot Order listings and your IDE/SATA drives listings. Where is this?

In notice on your Acer model's drivers page there are AHCI drivers. Check if SATA controller is set to AHCI in BIOS setup. This solves similar probs.

Before changing SATA controller, clear the CMOS: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS

The factory default has Network Boot enabled and F12 Boot Menu disabled. And SATA mode has been in AHCI

gregrocker said:

Yesterday I asked you about IDE1. This is because a MS advisory on your specific fail error said it is solved by plugging HD into IDE1. You told me only IDE0 was populated in BIOS.

I see IDE1 in the list there. You need to plug the HD into IDE1 to try install.

Once this has been tried, next change the SATA controller setting to SATA or IDE which also sometimes works.

Now is the time to clear the CMOS, before these changes are made.

?!?!?!?! IDE1 listed but not populated... How do I plug the HD into IDE1????

O_o
So I'm reinstalling Windows 7 over the one that's already there?

Also, I don't have any Vista recovery disks... never did