thanks Jeff,
motherboard is
MSI-MS 6741
Chipset VIA ID02404
southbridge VIA VT8237
SENSOR winbond W83697HF

bios is American megatrends ver 7.00 T

My Tiny Drivers CD has folders for about 25 Mother boards !!
I suppose it is a driver CD that they issue with al PC's and covers all they're products !!
thereis only 1 folder with MS 6741 K8 AMD , I guess this is the one ??
if I go into a folder label "misc" there is another folder called :-
VIA SATA raidcontroller

We can verify via MSI but that SATA/RAID controller should be it.

You need to copy it to a floppy and then insert when prompted after pressing F6.

when i go into the VIA SATA Raid Controller folder there is 2 folders,
PIDE and SATA also a TXTSETUP file and a VT6420 file.
inside the the PIDE folder are folders for various windos versions 98, XP etc
the same is inside the SATA folder but also another TXTSETUP file and a
VT8327 file I know fromtrying before setup wants a TXTSETUP file which one should I copy to floppy ?

I would copy them all.

A couple of minutes after pressing F6 you will get a screen to Press S to select drivers to load.

Then you should see a list from the floppy. Here you might load all the files one at a time (pressing S after each loads to load another) or you could just go trial and error.

If your hard drive is SATA you probably do not need the PIDE.

Also you probably just need XP files.

Thanks Jeph,
just tried that this morning but get this error message :-
" FILE \winxp\viasraid.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2113 in d :\ xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c.
press any key to continue .

I cannot put the motherboard driver onto floppy as it is over 5Mb.

Hello again ,
I managed to get the raid adapter drive from the MSI site that part is now ok.
but when I continue XP setup I select to new install ( as opposed to repair ) and to install ontop off existing partition .
my friend said there was an option of Full Format or Quick Format , but I was never offered this choice ??
on completion of setup there are still some folders I named so it is not a totally Fresh install ???
any ideas ???

You should have had the option to format if this is a retail Microsoft XP CD.

Mixing OEM versions of XP is always a bit strange.

Are you having problems or are you just concerned about the lingering files?

If you have a retail Microsoft XP CD you could format outside of windows with a tool such as GParted

Hello,
I've now managed to format the drive using the XP disc !!
my original problem was transcoding AVI's to DVD's using NeroVision.
I had tried numerous remedies to cure it but had to assume it was an issue with codec corruption.
Just tried Nero and it still failed !!!
How "clean" does Xp format the drive ??
could I still be getting corruption from within the hidden original partition where Xp was preloaded ??