my computer crashed, I bought a new hard drive and am trying o install windows 2000 pro. After going through all the steps it says it can't detect the hardrive. Any help will be appreciated. After I installed the hardrive was I suppose to do anything else?

ASPIRE 4720Z is a Laptop with a SATA Hard Drive, you need to offer the SATA CONTROLLER Drivers on a FLOPPY DISK at start of install by pressing F6 This is for XP but the principal is the same: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859

You can also set the controller settings in the system bios to IDE instead of AHCI. After that, you can install windows without problems. Please send a reply, if you solved the problem !!!

At what point do I do this, I am really confused

The above suggestions involve BIOS settings. When you first start your computer you will need to hit certain keystroke/s to enter the BIOS (setup). Once there you need to find the settings for the mode the SATA drive will run in. The choices are mentioned above. After making changes save the changes upon exiting. Watch the screens after that to see if the hard drive now shows up in those screens.

thank you all for your help, I finally got it working! i had no clue, but following all your suggestions I almost feel like a pro-ya right! but seriously thank you all- I was ready to throw this out the window! Take care and God Bless!