I too had a sata drive but i installed xp without any problems. Check if your bios has ide compitability mode if so enable it . It should work fine no slipstreaming .OR if you purchased a sata drive you should have got the sata drivers in a floppy disk, during installation it will ask if you want to add any 3rd party scsi driver click yes and it will scan the floppy and get the drivers

---------- Post added at 09:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:03 PM ----------

just check for faults on your ram stick.