Acer Aspire 5100 battle.

So, for the past few days, I've been trying to get my girlfriends computer back up and running... well, I say running, it was, but horribly (mostly because of Vista).
She doesn't use it for that much, so I figured; "If I format and put XP on there, it'll be a decent computer".

This has proved difficult!

Currently it has no OS.

I try to install Windows XP SP3, and it get's half way through the installation then BSOD's and says:

Except it's like; 0x0000007B (0xF79B1528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

After LARGE AMOUNTS of Googling, I've tried the following;

- To find SATA drivers - assuming the problem is that the computer can't recognise the HDD - which I can't.

- Tried to change the BIOS option from SATA to IDE, but the option does not exist.

- Tried to update the BIOS from 2.74 to either of the newer versions on the Acer website (hoping this would add the feature in the above point). This took me almost all day to make a CD that would actually boot into DOS and then it tells me that "phlash16" (part of the BIOS update) is a Bad Command or File-name.

- To install Windows 7, which says something along the lines of, "Cannot find files for setup, please restart installation" about a third of the way in.

It actually feels like I've tried everything!

Can anyone else shed some light and help me get this thing going again?

 

No one has any idea?
What if I bought a USB-FDD?