Building a new PC with 80GB Maxtor SATA HDD, loading Windows XP Professional. Setup begins as normal, runs through the "Setup is formatting..." stage but then hangs at 94%. I don't usually have problems with the IDE drives. Is there something I'm missing with the SATA HDD?
For info, the mb is Asus P5N73-AM, cpu Intel Celeron dual core. 2GB Kingston RAM.
Thanks, any help appreciated.

There is nothing inherent in SATA that would make the formatting stop. I'd suspect a problem with the hard drive.

Seagate provide support for Maxtor these days, so go HERE and download Seatools for DOS, you can burn it to a cd and boot from the cd to run a diagnostic test on the drive.

The tutorial is HERE.

Thanks so much for the advice. I changed the HDD (which was new) and the replacement loaded just fine. I will try the diagnostics tools later, but for now the original problem is solved.
As always this forum never lets me down. Thanks again.