I don't know if you solved the problem yet or not. But I had a very similar issue with a Dell Optiplex 755. It came preloaded with Vista, but some of the software we needed wouldn't run properly in Vista, so we went the dual boot option. the PC had 2 SATA drives in it - Vista on Disk 0, and a blank Disk 1. On a Dell you could invoke a Boot Menu and tell the PC which drive to Boot fomr (and it would be your C:) - so everything seemd simple. Disconnect Disk 0 (Vista boot drive, and only disconnect during XP install so I don't screw anything up), boot to XP Install CD, and away it goes. Then Bluescreen! Always a bluescreen - never even got to a prompt... After some research, I find it isn't the SATA drivers, persay, but an option in the BIOS that turned on some SATA extensions. XP hated them. So - It was defaulted to Auto - I turned the options off in the BIOS. I installed XP. Plug in Drive 0. Vista boots fine and sees both Disks. Reboot and press F12 to get the Boot Selection Menu - All my choices are gone! I just have Hard Drive, CD/DVD, USB.... Well, those BIOS SATA settings HAVE to be on for the "good" boot menu. The one where I can tell which SATA drive to boot from.... OK, some more research and I ended up where you are. Start setup, Press F6, and load the drivers. It recognizes the Floppy and I have 4 choices of wich driver to load. I select the first one and get the same type of error you got.... Ok - on down the line of selections (talk about time consuming), nothing works - the other 3 blue screen.... So I do it again selecting the first choice - the same error - so I grab another floppy and recopy the files. Select the first one again - and it works!!! I HATE floppy disks! The disks are crap, and the drives are so rarely used they fail constantly... But stupid XP HAS to HAVE the drivers on floppy. So, after my rant - be sure you have all the needed files on the floppy - be sure you can copy all the files off the floppy to a hrad drive - have a spare floppy drive to use in case your drive is messed up....
