Windows 7 cannot detect Hdd!?!?

Hi guys,

I have just recently decided to upgrade all my pc's at home to Windows 7 Home Premium. I have purchased a Windows Home 7 Premium Family pack that allows 3 installations on the one license. I have tried installing it on my pc running a legal copy of Windows XP Media Centre Edition and it cannot detect my hdd.

The PC itself is an Acer Aspire E500. I believe the motherboard running it is an ECS RC410-Mr (V1.0), has a Seagate Barracuda 250gb Sata Hdd and everything else is pretty much standard.

So here's what is happening. I have put the installation disk into the DVd-rom and booted up my pc. It loads all of the default files etc and goes into the standard process to select the install location. It doesn't detect a hdd.

So I figure at this point that i must have to load drivers for any on-board sata raid or something. Weird thing is i don't remember it having this option. I have looked into the bios to find if there is any low level Raid settings and there is no mention of it.

I have gone onto the ECS website to find drivers for such a thing and they do exist. I have put them onto a thumb drive and re-ran the installation. It detects the driver, I click load and it says it is not compatible. I have tried multiple sources of this driver and none of them work.

I have heard stories about having to do a bios update but I worry about this on 2 levels 1) the pc works fine and I dont want to risk killing it, 2) the bios updates dont say anything about a fix for Windows 7 or the raid controller.

Am I going about this the right way or is there something I have overlooked?

Any help would be appreciated!

What is the SATA controller setting in BIOS? Try AHCI, then IDE if necessary.

Remove all but 2gb of RAM to try install.

Try wiping the HD to get the cleanest possible slate. Make your XP Recovery Disks from Recov Partition as it will be disabled by Win7 install anyway. Then Boot DVD, press Shift F10 at first screen to open Command Line, type:
DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK # (for Windows 7 HD)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
assign letter=c:
active
format
exit

Thanks for the tip.

I first tried to find the SATA controller settings in the BIOS but there simply arent any in this bios. I have downloaded the motherboard manual and it shows that there is an area to configure it.

How dangerous is flashing the bios? Maybe Acer have blocked certain settings to the user to prevent damage?

thanks again

Little risk if you update BIOS from Windows. Be sure to follow the Read Me carefully.

If you don't update BIOS, then try resetting CMOS: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixthe.../clearcmos.htm

Do you have two HD's in a RAID array? You referred to RAID, which Win7 is somewhat allergic to.