Trying to Recover

Hot computer (3.2 Ghz P4) with a SATA RAID controller hangs on boot. Nothing gets it going so I try to reinstall from the Windows XP CD.

First of all, if you have a non-standard controller you must install additional drivers while Windows XP installer is starting up; you have to hit F6 early in the process (too bad if you miss your five second window--start over!). I've discovered you shouldn't insert your driver disk in the floppy drive while the installer is loading if you have more than one driver to install, because when you are (finally) asked to install the floppies, only the one that was sitting in the drive will be recognized. You press "S" as requested for additional drivers and the system will idiotically keep looking for the drivers on the first disk only. Start over!

(Another question: why does it have to take so unbearably long to install Windows, even on a fast computer, even if nothing goes wrong? I see Macs installing OS X in a fraction of the time.)

After all that, Windows installer still hangs at the "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows" screen. Did manage to install an ATA drive and put XP on that and recover contents of RAID Array...array virtual disk checks out okay with CHKDSK, too. But I am still unable to reinstall Windows, or even reformat the disk from the Windows installer.

That's trustworthy computing.