Most recent Dell notebook comes with SATA harddrive and Windows Vista preloaded. For those who wish to install Windows XP over Vista, you might run into problems because your XP CD doesn’t come with SATA driver support.
In other words, you will get an error message of disk can not found when booting your XP installation CD. To fix this,
1. Copy ALL content in your Windows XP CD into your computer
2. Go to Dell Support to download SATA Driver for your notebook model (under Windows XP)
3. Follow this guide to Slipstreaming SATA driver into XP bootable CD using nLite
4. nLite create the new image file burn into a bootable new XP CD with SATA support!
Alternatively, you can check the BIOS if you can turn off SATA support temporarily, to IDE, or etc. After everything installed successfully, switch back to SATA mode! Too bad, Dell Vostro 1200 above don’t have this, therefore you have to opt for the slipstreaming option.