Hello, I've recently built a new computer system and am having some peculiar issues with installing Windows XP Pro. My current hardware setup: MOBO: MSI K9A Platinum Rev. 1 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 RAM: OCZ ATI CrossFire 2GB Dual Channel Video: PCI-E Sapphire Radeon X1900XT 512GDDR3 HDD: 500GB SATA 3gb/s Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS Right now, my SATA II drive is the only hdd connected to the motherboard and is the disk I am trying to install Windows XP to. On my MSI motherboard, I currently have the SATA controller set to Native IDE. This is the first time I've tried installing XP to a SATA drive rather than IDE/PATA, so I'm not exactly in familiar territory. From using google, I've seen elsewhere where people have needed to install 3rd party SATA drives with f6 during setup. As I understand it, it appears that I don't need to install drivers because the SATA controller is running in Native IDE mode. Setup gets to where you can create/format partitions. I am able to format and/or partition the SATA drive without drivers. I assume I don't need drivers for the SATA drive if the controller is set to Native IDE, correct? In any case, that is how my motherboard is setup right now while I am attempting to install XP. The first time I attempted to install XP, I was using a backup disk I made of my XP install disk with Service Pack 2 and updates only up to October 2006 slipstreamed into the setup process. Using the backup, I was able to get to where I could format the SATA drive, and copy over files from the disc before reboot. This appeared to go without error. However, after loading into XP for the first time to complete the setup process, I recieved an error message saying that two different files could not be copied over. One file was for msnmessenger, and the other was some sort of dictionary file. Niether are terribly important, but I'd like for setup to work flawlessly. I chose to skip over those files and loaded into Windows. I don't believe there are any problems with the SATA drive, or the memory. I haven't run memtest yet, but it doesn't appear to be any issues. OCZ is supported by MSI for this particular model motherboard. I came to the conclusion that somehow I might've done something wrong with preparing the backup of my XP disc and then went back to the retail. With my original XP install disc, I reformatted the drive and recreated the partitions. Again, the first part of setup appeared to go smoothly. Then I let the computer reboot and load into XP. Like before, I got past the part where I create an adminstrator password, account name, etc. and it gets to where it is copying over more files. Like before, it gets to a certain file it claims can't be copied over from the disc and prompts me to insert the install disc or specify the location of the file. The third time, I borrowed my friend's oem XP install disc, just to see if it could get through setup. This time, right after the drive formats and it copies over files for the first time, it gets to another file and says it can't be copied and must be skipped. There is nothing physically wrong my backup copy, my original XP disc, or my friend's original XP disc. No matter what, at some point a file will fail to copy over during one part of setup or the other. When I skip over these files, I am able to boot into XP perfectly. The hard drive is running without the need for SATA drivers. Does anyone have any idea of why this problem persists no matter what setup disc I am using? I am using the factory BIOS for my motherboard. I remember the last time I built a computer, a similar situation occured where every other file wouldn't copy over after the drive formatted. On that system, I was using all IDE drives. I set everything to cable select because my friend's father said something along the lines of newer motherboards preffering system devices being set to cable select. I didn't understand why that would affect anything or why newer motherboards would need cable select. I also disabled IDE Prefetch in this other computer [I read somewhere you should disable IDE shadowing/caching but I don't remember why], and then I double checked the cable connections. I even flashed the BIOS on the other computer. Somehow, I was able to get the OS to install without a hitch at one point, though I'm not sure what exactly did the trick. On this new computer, the manual wants pins for master and slave on the IDE channel, or that's how I understood it. I have just a Hitatchi dvd rom on the IDE channel as the master. There is only 1 IDE channel and four SATA II ports. My 500gb sata drive is set as third master. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give as much detail as possible over my situation. Are files failing to copy over because I didn't put in SATA drivers? If so, then why does setup even let me see and access the drive without the software? Should I try flashing the BIOS or does anyone have an idea of something I could try changing in the current BIOS version? I solved this problem before on my other computer, but it was months ago and at the time I didn't really understand which of my actions was responsible for getting the operating system to install. I am at a loss as the drive appears to work fine without sata drivers and loads in XP after skipping over the corrupted? files. I don't think my BIOS are buggy, as my drives detect perfectly so as far as I can tell, everything is running as it should. I haven't tried installing to an IDE hdd again, as I would really like to have XP work on the sata drive. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Again, sorry for the lengthy post.

I forgot to mention that right now I am at my friend's house with my retail XP disc. This time he suggested formatting the drive, but leaving it unpartitioned. I'm not sure how that would help. I might try getting Knoppix or Ubuntu Linux and seeing if any problems happen if I install a completely different OS. At this rate, I'm not even thinking about buying Vista if I can't even get this version to work.

First you have to test your ram memory.

Yes, I agree. It sounds like a RAM problem. If you have two sticks of RAM, remove one and try the install. XP is very particular about RAM, at least during install. If the installation goes alright, you can put the other stick back in and it will probably work fine after that. Musky If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

*smacks forehead* Well I never stopped to think about it being a ram issue. Donl: yeah, I'm a moron, I should've known to run memtest first thing. I need to get my hands on a floppy drive or make a DOS partition and run memtest [and maybe flash my bios for good measure] Musky: Yes, I have two DIMM modules, at 1gb each. They are inserted into DIMM1 and DIMM3 respectively, as this is one of the configurations specified by my mainboard's manual. Now that I think of it, I think at one point on my other computer[I had 1 stick of 512 DDR 400]I placed the DIMM module in a different slot. Some site I googled suggested that, I believe. Maybe that was what got setup running, I don't really remember as that was quite a while ago. All I know is, on that computer I no longer have problems with installing Windows like I did first time around. Thank you again for your help, I will try your suggestion and let you know how everything works out.