IS it normal

I hv a PATA HDD plugged into the mobo via the seriellel adpater. It will not boot, gives me an error on the blue screen.

The OS installed on the HDD is XP. I can read frm and write to it if I use it as a slave, but just cannot boot frm it.

It is normal? How do I resolve this without hving to format the HDD. Thx.

I'm thinking you didn't install the OS on the HDD while connected to the Serial Controller. The best thing to do is reinstall the OS with the hardware configuration that you plan on using, since your going to use a mass storage controller apart from IDE 1 & 2 you will need to install the SATA drivers by pressing F6 at the first setup screen. Yes you will need a floppy for this.

It is true the OS on the HDD was installed on another system with Intel ICs......think i hv to re-installed using the recovery procedure.

Can the new SATA (RAID) driver be installed after the OS is installed? I know it for a fact, but I never quite know when to press the F6...sigh!

I don't think so. Migration is just asking for trouble specially if its a totally different chipset.