Install on latter partition nightmare

Please help
I've been struggling to install 7 home premium OEM onto a 320gb hard drive on a Toshiba laptop.#
Think make and model is unimportant.
It's a mates laptop and the first 60gb are damaged so I have partitioned the first 60gb and left it as unallocated.
Then install 7 onto the later partition.
when restarting it sticks at "press any key to boot from cd"
or disk read error if I remove dvd.
looking at the hard drive it looks like it's not installing the 100mb system boot details at the beginning of my partition.
How do I do this please as this drive is fine after the first 60gb.
Done this a thousand times before but not with 7!!
Thanks - James

Done it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Booted from dvd and deleted whole disk and formatted it using Windows 7 boot disk.
It then created the system partition.
click next and just as it started installing I click cancel and shut down
then using hirens I booted from usb and used partition magic to shink main partition by 60gb and moved it to end of disk.
then moved 100mb system partition upto the begining of the main partition leaving 60 gb unallocated at the beginning of the disk.
Shut down and rebooted from the dvd a did custom install to the main partition .
I then must have found the system partition and did the business as it is now booting for the rest of the install.
I knew there must be a way even if it is complicated (Thats microsoft!!)

Thanks for help

James

Would a low level format possibly help this situation? Perhaps something like dbans boot and nuke and making a few passes at the hard drive prior to trying install as a last type resort type thing?

I would also do a full format as shown in Step 2.2 of SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
to quarantine bad sectors. The format done by the installer is Quick.

You can block the install from touching the first 60gb by making it a Logical partition which cannot host boot files, then make the remainder a Primary NTFS Active using the Diskpart commands shown, close the Command Box and click Install Now to install to the Primary.