Windows 7 installation problem

That would be nice but Win 7 won't install. I have Vista ( I've tried with XP PRO sp3) And I ve tried two versins of win 7. x86 and x64. Both stop installing at the exact same place. After win 7 has loaded files and does it's 1st boot, it gets to boot from CD and stops loading. I can boot from a floppy or a CD/DVD but nothing else. Each has a front partition on separate drives. I've trued switching drive boot priorities and
vista repair.Any suggestions?

That's the problem you have both floppy and optical drive options set as first in the boot order ahead of any hard drive. Pressing the F1 or other F key assigned for the boot device menu and selecting one of the hard drives should see one installation complete itself until the boot order sees one hard drive set as first.

I run into that often enough where someone running a prebuild forgets to set the boot order correctly once the files finish copying and the initial restart is seen. Even without a floppy drive seen on most systems the bios will tend to still be set that way depending on who made the bios.

When installing or reinstalling any OS here I leave the intended boot drive set as default and simply bring up the menu of drives selecting the optical drive for the one time boot session. That saves running in and out of the bios until needing to change which hard drive will be default for the day here anyways.

One there would disabling the floppy search if you don't have one installed right off. Then you would simply set the hard drive as first. If your bios sees a separate boot order or boot section you can scroll to "hard drives" press enter and move one drive to the top of the list of drives making that the default there.

If you are getting as far as the first reboot, it is obviously not a boot order problem. But you have not created an install autoboot dvd by chance? It sounds like it is rereading the DVD, on restart. It should not be doing this. By the time it goes through the first reboot, all the needed files have been expanded to a temp on the HD.
You could try dumping the contents of the DVD to the hard disk and running the install from there?

I have the option of booting to the CD, or any other CD. THe Win 7 won't continue through frome there to install.

The hard drive wouldn't be seen at all if set as master on the middle connector. But since you have been able to change partitions deleting the first on the second drive. without a partition you won't see any logical drive letter to begin with being assigned to it.

Besides seeing the optical drive set as the first in the boot order when working with multiple hard drives the OS drive has to be set as the default boot device once all setup files are copied to the drive. If a second hard drive apart from the OS drive is set as default you won't boot anything.

When mixing hard drive types ide and sata unless you are dual booting from the ide drive the Windows installer will see all boot files and information placed there despite having Windows installed on the sata. You would need to unplug the ide drive first when going to install onto the sata to see that made bootable and set as the default drive.

Well, I fixed the problem, at least part way. Win 7 is installed. I'm going to hve to set up a boot loader but it's installed.
I disconected the 500G sata drive and eliminated the floppy.
On the 160G ide, I created a new partition table and MBR. Factory specs. I partitioned that drive with a 45G primairy, an 50G backup, a 20g swap, and a few other partitions, and went for another install. it worked.
I had all ready had XP PRO on the sata drive. I now have both drives connected and it boots to XP, thats the drive I placed 1st. I'll have to get a boot loader.
I think I can boot the win 7 cd and repair the start and it will give me it's boot loader but will look into that later.
All's well except for what I lost when I put in a new partition table.