New Comp, Vista Ult 64bit, Startup SATA/RAID HD not found

Ok, I just bought a Gateway E-155 tablet online and it came with the Vista Ultimate 32 & 64bit CDs. The person who I purchased it from said it was already installed and ready to go. When I received the laptop today, I turned it on and it said no OS installed.

I went through the procedures and arrived at the 'where do you want to install Windows' part of installation which, of course, had no HD to choose from. After researching the topic it seems that this is a common problem. I decided to go to Gateway.com and downloaded all the drivers and unzipped them and put them onto a USB drive and tried to 'slipstream' them into a Windows XP install and still it said 'no drivers found'. Then I found a post that suggested going to Intel and obtaining the SATA/RAID driver. After putting that onto the USB, tried it again and it finally found a file (ICH7M/MDH SATA AHCI Controller) but after it attempted to use it, said that still no driver was found.

One person suggested going into the BIOS and turning the 'RAID' on, but I saw nothing of it on the SATA settings and so I adjusted those settings, each one followed by reattempting to find the drivers... nothing...Well, here is what it says in the BIOS under boot priority... it contains...

1.IDE ODD: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U10N-(
2.SATA HDD:
3.PCI DEV: IBA GE Slot 0200 v1232


Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!! Thanks!!!!!

Hi Zae88

When you try to install your operating system, there was no hardrives available to choose from, is this correct? And when you selected the option to install drivers for your hardrives in the vista installation wizard it failed to do so?

Correct. During the installation, it doesn't show any HD to choose from for installation. The drivers weren't selectable as well. At another forum on the net here, many people had the same problem for SATA HDs when installing Windows XP or Vista.

In the bios, what is the configuration of the hard drive? is it IDE or RAID?

Please list all of the options under the hard drive settings in the BIOS menu please, thank you.

Hope this helps.