@ merlin is it cause I is a WOMAN?

The link is there on installing to help with install xp on a sata drive,or shall i just copy and paste instructions?

Rizla save links they will come in handy.

merlin, the sata hd doesnt have any jumpers. when i brought the HD it said SATA 2, some sites call it 300. so im sure its a 300 SATA HD.

But anyways, had another try at the bios, not sure what it was but installed wins.xp and now can see both my rom drives.
Thanks for all your and jelly beans help.

another question, now that i've installed wins.xp can i add another SATA HD [not identical ] to my pc without doing anything in the bios or anything else?

e.g.
1st. 500gb SATA HD with wins.xp
2nd. 160gb SATA HD for downloads

Well Rizla if your adding a second sata drive you have to setup RAID and switches the info is all on those links for you.Now some ppl say they must be mirrored drives exactly same size but that is not the case.I have fitted a 250 SATA as main and 80 SATA as slave and all is well.

Rizla you are most welcome.

No jumpers need to be set to configure a SATA drive. Serial ATA connections take the guess work out of master/slave drive configuration, since the single drive point to point connection has been introduced.

The Serial ATA host automatically determines the master and slave hard drive.