First, congratulations to Russel Sullivan, Taliska & others in this
Newsgroup for their detailed hints on how to work the thing out.

However, I've been through all the posts, and I am still missing
something to make it work!

Recap of the problem:

Got me the GA-8KNXP Motherboard, Rev 1.0, BIOS version 6.
I have 1 disk (DISK 1) on the SATA0_SB port (Intel ICH5-R SATA
controller), from which I would like to boot.
I have 2 disks (DISK 2 & DISK 3, without systems) on IDE1.
ALso have DVD & CD burners on IDE2.

When powering-up, the three disks appear nicely: IDE1 Master - DISK 2,
IDE1 Slave - DISK 3, IDE2 Master - DVD Burner, IDE2 Slave - CD Burner,
and Master 3 - Disk1 (SATA).

I the tried to install XP on the SATA disk:

Step 1: I booted with the XP CD-ROM, pressed F6 when asked if I wanted
to load SCSI drivers, loaded the SATA drivers (from Gigabyte site),
then got to the XP installation menu, created a partition on DISK1
(SATA), and XP started to install.

Step 2: Then XP rebooted the machine (to restart from the disk), and
there, problem: there is no dialog anymore to ask for SATA drivers
during the boot sequence, so the SATA disk is not accessed (mentionned
during the power-up test, but not accessed), so the boot sequence ends
in booting from XP CD, which restarts the sequence from Step 1 (and
obviously does not pursue previous installation but proposes to start
anew).

Step 3: I then disconnect my IDE disks (DISK 1, DISK 2) and reboot.
The Board found no more IDE, and remapped automatically the SATA disk
to IDE1 Master (as shown in the list of disks during the power-up. So
the boot sequence loads from DISK1 (SATA, but mapped to IDE1), and
previous XP installation is resumed.

Step 4: After having installed XP on the SATA disk, I reconnect the
two IDE Disks, and reboot. The Board switches the SATA disk back to
SATA ("Master 3"), and the boot fails "Error Loading OS", or something
similar. I tried to switch "On Chip SATA" to "Auto", then to "Manual"
with SATA Port0 configures as "SATA Port0", I tried to select "Intel
ATA Controller" as first in SCSI/SATA/RAID order (the other 2 choices
being Silicon Image and ITE Gigaraid, I figured that Intel was the
SATA port to which my Disk was connected). I also enabled/disabled
"SATA RAID FUNCTION". Nothing worked (unless SATA is mapped to IDE,
which defeats the purpose).

Question So I guess at this stage the question seems to be: If I
want to boot directly from the SATA disk, then from where is the BIOS
supposed to load the SATA drivers? Not from the SATA disk, certainly
(chicken & egg sort of thing). And it does not (would be quite
inconvenient) ask for a diskette with the drivers each time it loads.

Anyone could help me? Russel? Taliska?