Please help me install OS

I have a Gateway laptop. It was running W7 Ultimate fine until I'd done a stupid mistake. Tried to run FREOTFE and shut dowm my computer. It was long story. Anyway, I have to take the WD 320GB out to re-format and put it back to the laptop.

When I tried to put in the W7 cd to install the OS:

Chose language: english........
Chose install now
Accept the license terrms
Chose Custom (Advantage)

When I am at "Where do you want to install Windows?" page, I don't see any drives but at the bottom says: "No drives were found. Click Load Drivers to provive a masss storage driver for installation".
Click on Load Drivers and pop up the window says: "To install the device driver needed to access your hard drive, insert the installation media containing the driver files, and then click OK.

I don't know what it is. If I click OK, it say no divers were found. If I click on Browse, I can see the hard drive and cd drive but nothing in the hard drive of course. Now, I am stuck. Can't install the OS.

Go to BIOS, I can see my hard drive, cd drive....
Put HD into external enclosure, it is running fine.

Please give me some advices.

Anyway, I have to take the WD 320GB out to re-format and put it back to the laptop.

Did you format the drive in NTFS? And what did you use to format the drive?

Is the HD showing up in the BIOS?

Change its port/cable if necessary.

gregrocker said:

Is the HD showing up in the BIOS?

Change its port/cable if necessary.

Yes, I can see it in BIOS.

What do you mean by changing cable/port? If I installed the HD directly to laptop, then no cable. However, if I do "custom installed" like I said above, I used usb cable and I could see the drive in desktop.

You may have to load the HD controller driver at the Load Drivers link. This is normally only necessary if it is an older HD with dated IDE controller driver, as Win7 installer has most all SATA drivers.

Check the Support Downloads webpage for your computer/mobo model for the IDE controller. It may be part of the chipset. Unzip the driver file onto stick or CD, browse from installer link until the driver is picked up.

It is SATA HD: WD3200BEVT.

Can I install the OS on another external HD and then copy & paste to this HD?

I really screw up this time, huh?

Does FreeOTFE have a bootable utility you might need to use to unlock the drive?

How did you reformat the drive when you moved it to another computer? Hopefully you used MBR and not the other option when you reformatted.

Could there be anything on your laptop, like some type of security setup that might be causing a problem?

If you boot to the Install DVD and go to repair, the command prompt window, maybe running Diskpart and then cleaning the drive would help. It does not seem this would be necessary if you were able to reformat the drive in another computer.

If nothing else, maybe using something like Killdisk would clean the drive. You might have to reinitialize it. There are some user guides on the site if you want to read about how it works.

You can't install Win7 to an external HD due to USB limitations.

You can however try as a last resort moving HD to another computer to install as this has worked for me several times. It changes out all the drivers requesting multiple restarts, but if it starts up then it is usually good to go with no performance issues.