Compaq presario C700 won't boot after XP install

Question

I had Vista on the machine and decided to load XP pro instead.
I made an XP install disk with the SATA drivers on it (using nLite). Ran the install.
Had just 1 partition, so did a full format. Windows installed on the machine and it re-booted.
However as soon as soon as the BIOS tried to start windows the machine just re-booted.
I tried all combinations of install with and without Sata native enabled/disabled.
I can run the recovery console, but couldn't see anything there to help.

Getting fed up - anyone have any idea what to do?

Thanks

Murray