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I know that Dell did a deal with Microsoft and added something to the BIOS that stopped going to XP from Vista I had it happen to me when I tried to upgrade from Vista to XP
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No mate, it's simply that XP does not support SATA Hard Drives without driver. In other words, XP doesnt see/recognise your SATA hard drive, so you can not start installation if there is no hard drive
You have couple of options to go around the problem, all of them covered extensively on the net.
My laptop came with Vista, I installed XP as well so I can choose which one to run. I slipstreamed the SATA driver into installation XP CD. Or you can buy external floppy drive just for that, or cheat in BIOS if possible and so on. There is a solution for everything
But first thing first, get all drivers for your laptop before you start doing it. (Like video card, network card, chipset sound card and so on) MOst of the times you can download all of them from laptop manufacturer for your particular laptop model.
cheers