Can't install XP...

Alright, I've got a friend who's running a K8V Deluxe, not sure what processor, A stick of hyperX, 9800 XT and An 80 gig SATA. Yesterday, I went over to his house to clean up his windows installation. So I turn it on, and before it can boot into windows, I get an error saying "error loading a347bus.sys" or something. I try safe mode, same problem. I figured out that it had something to do with his promise controller. So we downloaded the drivers for it, went through the XP installation where it allows you to install 3rd party SCSI, etc.. adapter drivers. It found the driver, but failed to install it every time. And yes, it was the correct driver. So I moved the drive from the promise to the moboard controller. By the way, both the promise and the onboard controllers recognized the harddrives. I got into the windows installation, and it still said that there were no hard drives detected. Then I looked and realized one of the ground molex pins that was in the hard drive had popped out. I put it back in, tried again with no result. I just can't get the windows installer to recognize the harddrives. Any ideas?

does the bios recognize the hard drive?

Yep.

Even if you are not using the Promise controller, Windows XP does not have native SATA support (not for all types anyway). You usually still need to do the "3rd Party Install" for the drivers during the windows installation even if using the motherboard controller.

I am just taking a stab in the dark here:
First point, you mentioned the power plug ground popping out, you verified that the drive is actually spinning up (I assume it IS working since you said that the BIOS detects it)

Second, are you sure you have the drivers on the floppy arranged (all files needed included) correctly? I will assume that you unzipped them all and put them into their own folder? I sometimes have a heck of a time if those drivers are not arranged in the proper folders and such on the actual floppy disk that you made. Do you get the "TXTSETUP.OEM" not found error? If not, what type of error are you getting?

True, I probably should've tried installing the onboard SATA drivers for it, and then trying. I thought about it, but I was too fed up by that time. But yeah, even with that pin popped out the drive was still spinning, which really confused me, and it was detecting it in the BIOS too. I'll give the onboard SATA drivers a try, and see what happens.