Weird issue

I'm doing a clean install of XP home on a Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop. I swapped hard drives cause one was toast. Formatted the drive and loaded windows. After driver installation I began to update windows. 1/2 through service pack3 it blue screens and the hard drive is not picked up in bios. Shut down, pull out drive and reinsert and it is fine for another 5-10 minutes. Thinking it's a bad install, I format and reload. No windows update this time - no drivers install - just time. Blue screens and shuts down. No hard drive in bios. Do the unplug/plug thing. Here's the wierd thing: If I boot it in safe mode it doesn't blue screen.

I was thinking controller issue, but safe mode being ok seems to make me think software.

Just to be safe, I reseated memory and flashed the bios but I'm still having issues. Any ideas?

I'm with you. I'm pretty stumped on this one. I'm trying different hard drives, thinking there may be bad sectors on the ones I'm using, etc. I've never seen this, so it's kind of cool to see something new. Frustrating, too.