sata on xp issues

For 32-bit Win XP, NO version or update of it included a built-in driver for AHCI devices. I don't know for sure about 64-bit XP, but I suspect it is the same situation. The "correct" solution is to install the driver yourself at the time of first installing the OS.

For those unable or unwilling to do the "correct" process, BIOS writers created the "IDE Emulation" mode for setting the properties of the SATA controllers. All it does is limit the controllers to use only the capabilities of the older IDE HDD units for what really are SATA drives, and thus making Windows think that it actually has IDE drives and can deal with them using its normal built-in driver. But you say your laptop does not have that option.

Now, the "correct" solution makes use of a feature that has been in Windows for a long time. Early in the Install process a prompt comes up asking whether you want to add any driver(s) to the system; if you do, you MUST press the "F6" key as prompted and then it will run you through the process of loading that driver and ask if you have any more. When you're done it returns to the main Install path and continues. It then installs that driver you provided at a "low level" in the system software so that it becomes a new "built-in driver" that Win XP has and will use to BOOT from AND to USE normally.

In 32-bit versions at least, the "catch" is that Win XP only knew how to load such a driver from a FLOPPY disk. So you had to have the driver loaded onto a floppy using another machine before starting the Install, AND you had to have a floppy drive at least temporarily connected to your machine for the Install process. (Later versions of Windows expanded the types of devices it could load a driver from.)

Beside using this process for loading an ACHI device driver at Install time, the same process is still used for other devices like a RAID system or a SCSI drive, etc. I have a machine in a retail Point-of-Sale application that I set up to boot and run from a RAID1 array (managed by the mobo's RAID BIOS capability) consisting of a pair of SATA HDD units. I set it up under Win XP 32-bit with the driver(s) for the HDD's and the RAID array using this system, and it works perfectly. The system can boot from the array and uses it as its only storage "device".

Windows Vista and all versions since have included "built-in" device drivers for BOTH IDE and AHCI (the real device type for SATA HDD's) devices, so this process is no longer needed if you are not using things like a RAID array to boot from.