When installing Windows XP Professional, the most difficult snag that one often runs into is incompatible hard disk controller drivers. This often presents itself when hard disk drives are cloned and placed in systems with differing hardware architecture.

Errors such as these can present themselves: STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78B2524, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

The cause is either an incorrect SATA mode (ATA, which was changed to AHCI), or improper hard disk controller device drivers (remember folks, just because Windows XP setup recognizes your hard drive does not mean that it is loading the proper drivers.

We hope this bit of information helps somebody who runs into a similar problem after cloning a hard disk, or who is performing a fresh reinstall of their operating system.