PLEASE HELP!!! I have spent over 10 hours trying

Why was it set to IDE? You have IDE?

If not, it should be set to AHCI.

Tryin to get HD spun up with second cup of coffee here

That was the default, and the drive was working when I had XP up....

Should it be something else? My drive is SATA

I am in the process of trying to install once again on a clean partition I just made. I will change the bios as soon as instalation fails.. most likely

yep, just failed again. I changed the setting to ahci and its not recognized anymore. I assume I'll have to load drivers at the partition screen.

setting to ahci results in error 0x80300001 when I try to select the partition

It is less efficient to run SATA drives in IDE emulation mode. AHCI is recommended. Try putting your SATA controller drivers into the installer.

Do you have a previous version of Win7 installer? Try it. You can always do the Upgrade over it.

where can I get a previous version of Windows 7 installer? Btw, I have no OS right now, as I formated my entire hard drive, erasing my XP.

You installing 64 bit?

Is your HD listed as DISK0?

No chance there is a RAID setup right?

I would try to get the SATA driver into installer from drivers CD, then replace Win7 DVD and click refresh.

Not sure there is a reason to run SATA HD in IDE mode if drivers can be loaded to set AHCI.

OH MY GOD. it got all the way to 55% this time before the error.....

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It was alot slower in failing this time though, if that means anything. It usually gets cancelled at 20-30%

No raid, yes this is 64 bit, hd is listed as sata0

sorry, it is the "expanding files" part, not "exracting files"

In OP you mention you tried a friend's Win7 installer. Was it same exact error using that other installer?

If so, then you can focus on the AHCI/BIOS settings, whether you have AHCI bios (you should if the choice shows up), getting correct IHCI/SATA drivers into installer.

You need to load the drivers from their CD/stick, then reinsert Win7 DVD and click Refresh.

You format over that XP formatting?