How do i load xp on a sata laptop drive

Enter the BIOS, to:
1) disable S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) So the BIOS can detect your HD which may be failing the analysis for whatever reason.
2) Or set the BIOS to IDE Native.. you can load the drivers later and after that change the BIOS back to SATA.
3) Or You can also load the SATA drivers from a floppy disk, when the XP installation begins and you're prompted to use the F6 key. If you have no floppy drive, you can use a bootable USB pendrive, providing the HD problem is not an object to begin the installation... If so, it may be usefull to disable S.M.A.R.T. or set IDE Native before starting the installation, then follow with the F6 driver installation.

If the Hard Drive is damaged beyond recovery the BIOS may not be able to recognize it... but if it can be recognized, disabling S.M.A.R.T. should work. IDE Native makes SATA drives behave as IDE drives... so that should help you install XP and switch to SATA after installing the drivers from the Windows XP GUI.