Formatting a Vista laptop

[RoosterMarty]

My mate has a HP laptop with Vista installed, it has run into a number of problems and now he would like XP installed on it. The problem is, I have no idea how to do this.
Installed XP on a computer with XP already on it is easy but Vista seems to throw up a few problems. I can't seem to get into DOS to do a format, and he didn't get a Vista CD with the machine, instead the OS is built in.

So does anybody know how I get around this? If I could just format the hard drive then I can install XP from scratch.

[Dissident]

Just boot from the XP CD!
then format and install.

Doesn't matter WHAT is on it.

[firstblood]

You should be able to boot it from a xp disk and format like Dissident has said..but if you manage to format the HD make sure you have all the drivers eg..sound card, graphics card etc..that are used in that pc. Being a new PC (or fairly new) Windows xp may not have the built in drivers for those.

[RoosterMarty]

Yeah I booted from the XP disc, went to install it but then I got an error message saying it couldn't find a hard disk drive or something. I found that to be odd because Vista still loads up despite it's errors. I also thought you could just install straight from XP as I've done it before with other OS but never with Vista. It sounds like it might have another error then which means a trip to a computer repairshop!

The problem is that whenever you try and open something, whether it's Windows Explorer or even Control Panel, the window will pop up.. stall for a while then close and all the icons disappear before usually reappearing a few seconds later. You can't actually run anything.

[Dissident]

Not sure what you mean there RM.

But make sure you delete the partition, remake it and format it, then install XP.

You can't install XP over Vista.

[RoosterMarty]

Ok so when you reboot with the XP CD, you go to Install Windows XP? Then delete partition, create partition, install?

When I go to Install Windows XP it does a bit of a check, press F6 to install 3rd party SCSI/RAID etc.. then I get an error message saying there was no hard disc found. I'm not attempting to install Vista over XP, I just want to delete it all together.

[Dissident]

Ahhhh

You have a HDD that needs a Floppy disk for the driver.

That, or you need Windows XP with SP2 built in :/

[RoosterMarty]

Damnit, looks like I will have to take it into a repair shop then! Thanks for the help anyway