I am building an ASUS S62E laptop for a friend who WANTS Windows XP installed on it. The laptop is equipped with: Intel T7500, 2GB RAM 667 and a WD 80GB SATA hard drive. After running WD LIFEGUARD tool to partition and format the hard drive for Windows XP, I attempted to install XP. Windows, however stops every time and exits the install because it can't locate a hard drive. The MESSAGE comes up saying that I should check the CONNECTIONS or install the hard drive's software to format the drive, which I did several times. The bios recognizes all 80GB of the WD hard drive, and I even installed PCBSD OS with no problems. However, my friend wants XP on the drive. I reformatted the drive with WD Lifeguard, and Windows still can't find the hard drive. What can I try?You need SATA drivers, probably.Yep you will need SATA (sometimes also called RAID) CONTROLLER drivers.
Check the ASUS driver page for the laptop and see if they don't provide SATA drivers for XP.
You will also need a floppy drive to install the driver. So if the laptop doesn't has one installed (it most likely hasn't) you will need an USB floppy drive.
Here is a nifty little guide that explains the whole thing. (Ignore the fact it's from Toshiba, the procedure is the same on all computers.)
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlView.jsp?soid=1192841