I had the same deal going on !!!!!
But what I learned was I had the ABIT HighPoint drivers loaded which arent digitally signed, and I was having data corruption and just plain weirdness, tray icons, programs loaded weird, not stable, doing something weird!!! 8)
 
So I gave up!! This is my 4th load of XP, learned what drivers worked and didn't and for me the HPT controller drivers from ABIT didnt work! Read the manual, the HPT controller shares PCI slot #5 IRQ, bad in some cases, and note the memory population order. E-mail your specs or post them.
 
Ned{Happy XP now}