Okay, this is hilarious.

My RTM copy of WinXP-Pro predates the motherboard it needs to be installed on. So it cannot see the (10) SATA interfaces.

Okay.. no probo.. driver disks.. on floppy. Tried those, still fails.

Next, use a SATA-disk-to-IDE-cable dongle and plug it into the mobo IDE port -- the install disk should be able to use that, since it boots and runs the CD from that same port.

Nope.

Next ? maybe I'll reassemble an ancient mobo and do the install there, and then just move the drive to the new one afterward.

Good fun with old stuff.

Thus far, no time wasted.. since I'm baby-sitting a horrible SLES11 system (slow as all get out) that I'm testing driver stuff on.

Cheers