How does Windows XP interact with hard drive during installation

I am trying to install Windows XP Pro 32 on a new motherboard with the CDROM as IDE primary master, floppy, and a SATA-II drive. Used 3 different XP CDs (all legal, no copies or downloads) of 32 XP, and one of 64 XP, and they all do the same thing: when it reaches the “Setup is starting Windows” blue text screen, the machine just reboots. This happens both loading sata drivers via F6 during installation or not. The SATA drive is not configured as RAID. As an experiment, I unplugged the hard drive, and the install routine again just rebooted after the “setup” screen. Is this normal for the XP install routine? At what point would you expect it to say “can’t find a hard drive”?