Windows 7: Installation Won't Reboot

Hello
I've been trying to install Windows 7 on a brand new computer. It's running RAID 0, and I'm using the latest drivers from my motherboard manufacturer.

Starting up the installation seems to work fine. It goes through the first phase of installation where I choose which partition I want to use, and it starts to copy files from the dvd, yada yada yada. After the "installing updates" section, a window pops up with the following message:

"Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation."

It then kicks me back to the start of installation. If I start the install again, it does the same thing. If I reboot and restart installation, also the same.

If I try a startup repair, I get a message saying that Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically.

I've tried this on two builds--7000 and 7077. Both have the same result.

Here are my specs:
AMD Phenom II 940 X4 Black
Asus M4A79 Deluxe board
Crucial 4GB RAM
ATI Radeon 4870
Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB x 2 (in RAID 0)

Is this the official Build 7000 release from M$?

Yep, I have an MSDN account and got it from there.

I should also note that I tried to install Vista Ultimate x64, and the installation does the exact same thing.

The only things I could think it could be are the 2 1.5TB drives I'm using in a RAID 0 config or some kind of BIOS setting.

I'd say it was the RAID config....did your mobo come with a driver disk? You might need that in order to actually have Windows control the RAID group....

Yep, it was the RAID. Although I pointed Windows setup to the RAID driver I downloaded, it was giving this problem. I turned off the RAID array and setup goes on just fine. Thanks for your responses, John!

The issue, though, is that it should work on the RAID too. Try *not* pointing it to the driver and see what happens....

And I am assuming that you used the appropriate driver (32bit for 32bit Win7 and 64bit for 64bit Win7)....

Is it something to do with your storage configuration?

Please check it again, just go to: BIOS>>>MAIN>>>Strorage Configuration
and tell what your configuration is.

The image is from the manual of your mobo, did you configure it correctly?

If I don't point it to the driver, it won't detect any disks. And yes, I am using x64 drivers with x64 OS.

Hi woolswell. The BIOS disk configuration is set to RAID. In the array configuration utility, I had tried to set the RAID stripe block to 64 KB and again to 128 KB, both resulted in the same issue.

I also know there are issues with the Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda drives with RAID, and I believe they have been worked out with firmware updates... however, I don't know what firmware version I have because the Seagate utilty that will tell me the version needs to run in Windows. I'll check it out when I get Windows installed without RAID and see if I can test a few more different settings and report back to hopefully help others out.

EDIT: Just loaded up Win7 and found out that my disks (CC1H firmware) are not affected and there are no firmware updates... at least for now

I didn't think it was a Drive issue per se - just a RAID issue in and of itself.

I understand you used x64 drivers in an x64 OS - but *which* x64 drivers, XP or Vista? that will also make a difference....

All the drivers I use are Vista.