SATA drivers are probably supported in firmware on your machine but check
with the manufacturer. Most of the new machines for the past couple of
years have that support and do not require using F6 to provide drivers.

"Gary R." <roberthouse@geocities.com> wrote in message
news:egH7wePaIHA.4880@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>I have a new notebook that came with Vista, and have entertained the idea
>of backing up the complete system, formatting, and then installing XP, with
>the thought that I'll probably get a considerable performance boost, not to
>mention losing the small irritations and nags that are constant with Vista.
>(I'm not a Vista hater, just don't really need the glitz or the "do you
>really want to..." screens, besides the occasional software that doesn't
>work with it). Plus, I think a 2 GB machine with this processor should fly
>with XP, and it's only so-so with Vista. If I change my mind, I'll have
>the disk imaged so I can go back to Vista.
>
> But the hard drive is SATA, and there is no floppy drive. As far as I
> remember, the floppy is the only possibility for adding the SATA drivers
> during XP setup, and I'm not even sure if it would recognize a USB floppy
> if I were to buy one specifically for that purpose. Any suggestions,
> workarounds, etc. would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>