Hopefully, the machine is old enough that it doesn't use a SATA hard drive. The XP installer does not have drivers for and cannot handle installation to a SATA drive, machine will actually crash during install. If you have the SATA driver on a floppy disk (no other medium) then you can insert it at the correct time and the installer will install it.
The other method would be to slipstream the SATA drivers onto the installer disk.