At a guess, the machine's BIOS is set to use AHCI for the SATA drives, which
would require that you install the SATA drivers so that the machine can
detect the HD. You'd need a floppy (an external USB one may be OK) and
commit the F6 driver bit during the XP Pro installation.

I'm not certain, but I believe that if you change the BIOS settings to ATA,
the system will detect the drive without needing the SATA drivers. Some of
the advanced SATA features would be unavailable, but the performance hit
would be minor. (You can always install the drivers afterwards and switch to
AHCI. I've done that.)

HTH.

Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

Are you using WinXP original edition, SP1, or SP2 integrated ?

These two articles are designed to confuse the hell out of you,
but the second one notes that WinXP SP1 has support for PCI
Native mode. Intel chipsets, starting with ICH5 Southbridge,
have the ability to make the disk controllers appear in the
"I/O Space" (compatible mode) or in the PCI address space
(enhanced mode). Use SP1 or SP2, if the BIOS has the disks
configured for enhanced mode. (It took me an hour to figure this
out!)

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/serialATA_FAQ.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/Native-modeATA.mspx

Your chipset is 925X and your Southbridge could be ICH6. The
Southbridge has room for six disks. If the BIOS is set to
"Enhanced" mode, as it should be by default, you can use
six storage devices, but for Windows to see them, you'd
want SP1 or later slipstreamed into your WinXP disk.
(Note that BIOS terminologies are not consistent, and since
I don't have a Dell BIOS manual to look at, I cannot guess
what they actually use on the screen.)

If the BIOS has a "Compatible" mode, only four of six disks will
work, where pairs of SATA interfaces are treated like they
were a ribbon cable. Old computers only had two ribbon cables,
used interrupts 14 and 15, and were set up for four storage
devices. Thus, when using an old OS that only has "I/O space"
drivers and not PCI drivers, you flip the chipset to Compatible mode,
select which four of six interfaces to use (as two will be disabled),
then do your install. That is how you'd be able to install Win98SE.

To slipstream a disk, you can try programs like Autostreamer.
Autostreamer takes original WinXP disk + SP1 download and makes
a new .ISO file from it. Then burn a new CD with the ISO, and that
becomes your install disk.

If the WinXP CD you've been given, is already at the SP1 or
SP2 level, it should already have a PCI native driver. In which
case, I'd enter the BIOS and make sure the Southbridge has not
been put in RAID or AHCI mode. That can muck up the works too.

You can also put the Southbridge in RAID mode, press F6 during
the install, and install an Intel RAID driver. If the end user
has a plan, at some time in the future, to experiment with
RAID 0 or RAID 1, that will prepare them for migration.
Installing the non-RAID way, as described in most of this posting,
will prevent an easy transition to RAID later.

Hope that helps, without further confusing matters...
   Paul

All great posts!!!  All great help!!!
And thanks so much for the lessons!
Learning every day.

Thanks Richard