Magento 1.7 – Configurable Product Shows as Out of Stock in Front End but In Stock in Back End

Was the product created programmatically or via import script?

If the configurable product doesn't have a value specified for the options_cointainer attribute, the effect will be similar to the one described by you.

You can solve the problem by saving the configurable product from Admin Panel, selecting a value for the the "Display Product Options in" of the "Design" tab of the product details.

Otherwise the following will do that programmatically:

Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load()->setOptionsContainer('container1')->save();

or

Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load()->setOptionsContainer('container2')->save();

Regards

As it happens I installed Simple Configurable Products and it appears to be working fine. I only enabled the 'Associated Products' option though which is all I needed and the prices from the simple products pass through and are updated on the product page as I select an attribute from the drop-down menu. The products then passes through to cart as a simple product as was mentioned by the creator of the extension. My only advise would be to read the 'Reviews' on the page as there are many who have this working in latter versions of Magento but they needed to make some amends to the 'Configurable.php' as mentioned by 'tzvimoshe'in his comment dated 29 October in the reviews below the installer. There is also advice for that in the Q & A tab on the same page. Also to make sure you log out then log back in once the extension is installed to ensure it loads properly in Magento's System Config (otherwise you get an error) and flush the Cache if necessary.