Well it because of the lost boot loader. So what I do is format and load
a win 98 disk first and then whatever I want next.

I tried a Win XP install disk, because that's what I have, and it
doesn't even see a drive.

I built a shuttle system for son and Im building two more for friends at
the moment and I recall reading that some Shuttles dont have (and I
looking for this information again as I write this) its either a driver
of something turn on in BIOS for the SATA connection. As soon as I find
it again Ill post it. I dont have that problem on these shuttle systems
as it effected another model so I only quickly read through it.

I dont have a lot of experience with SATA except to know I just plug in
the CDRW and HD and they work. XP Pro has always seen it for me.

Do you have SP1 or 2 XP and is it Pro or Home?

It's XP PRO SP2. I read somewhere that feisty had a bug about not
recognizing sata drives.

Thanks for all the tips. I just got done talking to the tech from
where I got my laptop. Acer built it to only work with Vista or
Linux. I guess it's possible to put WIN XP on but you have to have a
special floppy on an external Floppy drive. Right now I'm trying
Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe 5 on it to see if it recognizes the SATA drive.

I found a similar situation with a different laptop but I'm having a
hard time getting my mind wrapped around the solution.

blog.nominet.org.uk/.../installing-ubuntu-linux-in-toshiba-po\
rtege-s100/

Apparently that is true. I have seen several posts on other groups about
SATA in the past two days. I use SATA for CDRW and DVD+R but the only
SATA HD's I have done are on Windows.

You would think this would be something the linux community would fix fast.

In general SATA controllers and hard drives are supported. However, not all
SATA controller chips are supported in a particular Linux kernel release.
So, a distro release with a newer kernel would have a better chance of
supporting your hardware. I would advise that you determine the chipset of
the SATA controller and then check the Linux kernel mailing list for
support issues.

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel

Try this:

Problem solved through the BIOS settings.

Under "Integrated Peripherals" -> "MCP Storage Config", there is a
SATA Operation Mode selector. "IDE" was the initial unreliable
mode. There was also "RAID", "AHCI", and "Linux AHCI". I switched
to "Linux AHCI" and everything has been fine since.

the Phoenix Bios in this Acer doesn't have any of those settings.
It's pretty much security settings and which drive I want to boot
from first.

That is why you need to use an earlier start up disk. Most folk have a
win 98 CD from the old computer. Beg borrow or you know get one.

depending on the sata chipset you may need to load the drivers during
boot with win xp during the install you push f6 to do so was having
the same problem with a raid controller on a server Im building it
depends on whether sata exists in the bios or you have to make the
chipset load its own