THIS IS A HARDWARE problem; installing the SATA drivers with the F6 key as WinXP loads is all fine and good, but you HAVE to correct the CMOS settings in order to be able to BOOT from the SATA drive.
You CAN'T use EITHER of the RAID SETTINGS; you're ONLY using the one SATA HARD DRIVE, so RAID is NOT an option, though you probably know that. Any RAID array requires at LEAST two drives, and I understand that you want to move your original IDE drive to another system. That should NOT be a problem, once you get the CMOS settings to BOOT from the SATA drive.
FWIW, when PCI RAID and ULTRA ATA (high-speed) PCI controller cards first became cheap and widely available about four years ago, many people could NOT get them to work, because they did NOT understand how to configure them in the CMOS settings. Many motherboards did NOT have a setting dedicated to booting from those add-in cards, because the BIOS was developed BEFORE the add-in cards were so plentiful.
The engineers who developed the add-in cards needed a way to make their new cards work with the motherboards already in use worldwide; in order to do THAT, they knew that they had to make the add-in controller cards work with a CMOS setting that was ALREADY available in most of the modern BIOS chips, and they decided to use the "SCSI BOOT" option to accomplish that.
Their solution was simple, though it seemed BIZARRE at first; in order to get the add-in controller card to work as a boot device, they programmed the BIOS chips which would be installed on the add-in cards to LIE to the motherboard BIOS chip! The BIOS chip on the card FOOLS the motherboard BIOS chip by identifying itself as a SCSI device. When that happens, the motherboard BIOS does NOT try to boot from any IDE devices that are attached to the motherboard. Instead, it allows the add-in card to handle the bootup process, and goes to work handling the floppy disk, the modem, and anything else it can locate.
All the computer builder had to do was to install the add-in card in a PCI slot, and then enable the "SCSI BOOT" option in the CMOS settings; the add-in card BIOS would trick the motherboard BIOS by identifying itself as a SCSI device during POST, and the motherboard BIOS would stop looking for a boot device. The add-in card BIOS would then take control of the devices attached to it, and boot the system when it found an IDE device which contained an operating system. Once boot up begins, the add-in card BIOS signals the motherboard BIOS that it can now activate the other hardware in the system. The motherboard BIOS then continues polling to see if there is a modem installed, or a printer attached to the parallel port, and so on.
For the end-user, this all meant that you ALSO had to enable a CMOS setting that allowed a SCSI device to boot the system. As I've already mentioned, when that setting was ENABLED, the MOTHERBOARD BIOS handed off control to the add-in controller card; the motherboard BIOS is designed to allow ANY device enabled through the "SCSI BOOT" option to have control of the boot process, once the "SCSI BOOT" option was initialized by the motherboard BIOS.
Think about that for a moment; the motherboard BIOS does not "KNOW", and does not CARE, if a NON-SCSI device takes control; how would the motherboard BIOS "know" if an ELEPHANT was attached to the add-in card? It WOULDN'T "know", it wouldn't CARE, it is only a ROM chip, and if the CMOS setting requires the "SCSI BOOT" option to be enabled, it WILL be enabled; whatever happens to the boot device AFTER that is NOT handled by the MOTHERBOARD BIOS. All OTHER devices (the CD-ROM drive, the floppy drive, etc.) WILL be handled by the motherboard BIOS, but the BOOT DEVICE, whatever it may be, is handled by the "SCSI" device in the PCI slot, whether it is actually a REAL SCSI device or something else entirely. The motherboard BIOS simply activates the "SCSI BOOT" option by way of the CMOS settings, and the BIOS chip attached to the ADD-IN card takes over control of the boot device.
What that means in YOUR situation, Carl S, is that you have to locate the CMOS setting that will allow you to boot from the SATA drive. Since I have no way to see the manual for your motherboard, I can't SPECIFICALLY advise you on which setting to change, but it will OBVIOUSLY be related to the BOOT DEVICES. SOMEWHERE in there, you SHOULD see an option that allows booting from a SATA drive, or it might be marked as a "SATA / RAID BOOT DEVICE" or "RAID / SATA BOOT DEVICE", or by some OTHER label entirely, but UNTIL you find and ENABLE it, you WON'T be able to BOOT from the SATA drive, and WinXP will FAIL to install the first time it reboots during the installation process, since the SATA drive is NOT (yet) considered a boot device by the motherboard BIOS. HOWEVER, once you find the right CMOS setting and change it to ENABLE booting from the SATA drive, everything will work as you expect it to.
Well, what do you know, ANOTHER highly detailed post from me, but one that I feel is required to (hopefully) UNDO the damage I've caused in this thread, simply because I did NOT take the time to give Liz a COMLETE answer when I had the opportunity. To be honest here, I've actually SIMPLIFIED the explanation of how this entire process occurs, but with any luck, you now know all you need to know to understand what happens, and how you can MODIFY your CMOS settings to make your SATA drive the boot device.
