Ok, update.

I've slipstreamed a SP2 CD with nLite. I've added SP2, all the available hotfixes, and thousands of drivers with the helps of DriverPacks.net. This added more than 500MB to the installation CD (actually, it's a DVD now...).
The result was... the same! The notebook still does not see any harddisks available in the system.

I'm getting desperate here. <sob>
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup