I have faced this problem on many PCs, some with pata HDD n some with SATA, and yes they r on different channels, this problem does not happen if i load xp with pata ODDs, the reason still some of my clients use xp is that there jobs r not so hardware demanding like data entry, BPOs, etc., n so with low hardware resource (1gb,80gb,2.66) i have to install xp..