I have recently purchased an MSI 865PE platinum board (ICH5R chipset)with amongst others a 300Gb SATA drive. On trying to load XP, the install fails after loading the initial driver files with a DMBOOT.SYS is corrupt message - doesn't get as far as inital install/repair screen. The CD itself is fine as it boots on other machines. BIOS is set exactly as per MSI manual. Any ideas - I am baffled...thanx

Do you load the SATA drivers from floppy disk when Setup starts?
Also, try replacing the cable. And, what kinda memory sticks you got? If those are incompatible with motherboard or other memory sticks it can cause problems.

Try running the installation only with CDROM, HDD, FDD, 1 memory stick (more or equal 256 MB), graphics card, mouse and keyboard installed.

Remvove other devices(sound card,modem,nic,etc.) while installing, if you success in installation then add those devices one by one and let Windows install drivers for those.

I was having the same problem and the solution seems to be to hook your HD directly upto the MOBO, get rid of any serial ATA cards and upgrade the bios. This mobo seems to be incompatible with at least some serial ATA cards. I wrote more about it here:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/46164/?o=40
and here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21581130.html
Hope this helps,
Jordan