It does not let me format the HD.  Thanks

Try Windows Mojave instead. You might like it.

never heard of it?

if your running a newer laptop and it has the the resources just stick with vista... it is still a bit of a resources hog but unless you are running programs that put you near the limit don't bother.

-Mike

What kind of laptop? Go on the manufactures website and see if there are drivers for XP available for your computer first. If not you will have to look at the spec sheets and figure out what hardware you have and find drivers on your own.

Usually manufactures use the same hardware in a few different models of laptops, so look at similar ones they offer for drivers also.

Chances are the XP disk you have does not have drivers on it for the SATA drive in the laptop. Search for a program called Nview. It allows you to make slipstream XP cd's with the sata drivers on the disk. Just have to find out what sata drivers you need (helps by looking in the device manager in vista).

Good luck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQTCI7aacU

Mojave is a marketing campaign, they show people Vista and say it is a newer OS.
Then after the people are impressed they break the news that it is actually Vista.

Any reason why you're not giving Vista a try, I've never had any problems with it.

My first question is why do you want to?

If you have enough memory in the machine you shouldn't have any problems with a new laptop.  You can do some searching for services that you can disable to reduce the resource footprint that Vista uses.

Stupid Vista making me double-tap.

you'll need to boot your PC via cd(with vista cd). There will be an option in BIOS. This way it will clear off your harddrive and install vista. If you install vista while you're in windows, you'll just be adding it to your hard drive, usually in a folder called windows.old