grizzler said:
i know

Hence why i could do with any help!
Can't help, sorry,
you still ain't told me what the Laptop is, not that that matters much, but it would tell me at least what is in the thing.
There can be numerous reasons why XP cannot "see" your SATA drive ...
Is your version of XP at least SP1,
SP2 preferred ... the "original" XP had to use F6 to pre-install "additional" drivers, that is, if you have a floppy drive ... it may be possible to force this issue with a USB Thumb Drive with the drivers on, but not in a folder as they need to be in the Root of any Media that they are going to be installed from, the Windows XP installer was never designed to install from anything but the Root of a Floppy.
What does the BIOS "see" what drives you have ?
Oh, and I see no reason to install XP, providing the Laptop is capable of actually running Vista ... they don't 'arf cheat out there though ... only yesterday I had to "fix" a Sony laptop, that had less than 200Mb ram available, and that was running (20mins to boot) very slowly.
Sony ??? ...
