I'm in agreement with Andrei. Given a good copy of a bootable Win XP cd, you should be able to boot from it with no problems. You will run into problems if the CD/DVD drive isn't set as the first bootable device, if said CD/DVD drive is defective, if cable connecting CD/DVD drive is dodgy.

Where you'll run into problems with the installation of XP onto a SATA drive is at the "F6" prompt of the textmode installation (blue screen w/ white text) portion. Depending on your motherboard and the SATA controller on it, you may or may not need SATA drivers on a floppy. Many of the Intel boards do not need drivers, most with Nvidia and Silicon Image SATA controllers will need drivers at the "F6" prompt. One way to get around this is to integrate the drivers into the CD with nLite.