I found a description at
http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm
It suggests a bad driver.
A couple of possibly related items about SATA and RAID: I have an ASUS
P4S8X motherboard with an SATA/RAID controller. Before I could install XP I
had to do several things.
(1) Tell the BIOS that an allowed boot device was "SCSI/onboard ATA". This
refers to the SATA drive, not the more common IDE drives (which I do not
have). I also had to be sure that "onboard ATA device" was enabled on a
separate BIOS screen.
(2) Define a raid array. This seemed odd, since I assumed that the default
BIOS setup would make individual disks, but I was wrong. So I made two
arrays with one disk each. (Note that I installed 2 SATA disks, not one.)
In some setups this is called JBOD (just a bunch of disks). The point is
that I had to manaully do this. Until I did, even the hard drive maker's CD
could not access the disks. Thereafter, I formatted them no problem. All
this raid setup was, technically speaking, not really in the BIOS. Rather
it came after the BIOS stuff in the boot sequence, but still in the black
screen with white characters that is below the XP level. In my case I had
to enter the "FastTrack" setup, which was the name of the raid controller.
(3) Install drivers from floppy via F6. BUT, that was harder than it
sounds. First, I copied only the drivers to a floppy. That ultimately
failed to get XP installed. The trick was to copy the entire SATA driver
directory to the floppy. This included a very important file called
txtsetup.oem in the root directory of the floppy. Under that were
directories for nt4, win2000, and winxp.
Otherwise I took defualts or auto-setting for things like clock speed and
memory timings. I figured that tweaking could be done later, one the basic
PC had been tested at "safe" settings.
A few other hints about initial XP installs. Be sure that NO USB or
firewire devices are connected, except possibly for USB keyboard and mouse.
However, PS/2 mouse and old-fashioned key board may prove more reliable.
Have no ZIP drives attached, even internal ZIP drives. Have no printer
attached, USB or parallel port. Once XP is installed, attach each device,
one at a time, and they should be installed almost automatically.
Finally, read the entire motherboard manual. Sometimes the required
information is scattered in strange places. Also, since most manually are
translated into English, sometimes it is necessary to guess what they meant
to say, not what the words actually say.
