I never wiped my HD but you can try : http://abaababa.ouvaton.org/wipe/

i know for a fact that the drivers for the s-ata connection weren't on the original win xp disk. if this has changed recently, i don't know. i once tried to install windows on one of my computers and got stuck, because it doesn't have a disc drive so i could install the drivers which need to be loaded before windows can install. did your cousin install windows xp himself, or did it come with the computer?

It came with the computer, so I'm assuming the harddrive was just a clone from the factory. Whether or not the install disk has sata drivers is one thing, but Windows is definitely sata capable.

Now that I think about it, how old is the XP install disk, a newer computer might come with a newer disk that would include sata drivers. Surely if they ship you a computer with sata harddrives, they'll ship you a reinstall disk with sata drivers.

a lot of windows computers come with a so called 'recovery disk'. i've never worked out what this is, though i heard rumours that this means, that the contents of an installation disk are written onto a separate partition of the harddrive, something one has to remember, if one wants to install a second operating system.

motherboard manufacturers tend to supply diskettes with important drivers for things like sata support, so it probably isn't supported natively by windows xp at the moment. of course, if one has the right driver, it will work, but that's true of all hardware on all operating systems, as far as i know.

The difference between a recovery disk and an install disk, that I've found, is that the recovery disk will restore your computer to the way it came from the factory, ads, spyware, and all. An install disk will simply reinstall a clean version of the OS. Thats all as far as Windows is concerned.

SATA is newer that WinXP. Without doubt older copies of XP wouldn't have SATA drivers.

I would think that new copies of XP would have SATA drivers, but I have no first hand experience to confirm or deny that.