Installing XP on Vostro DISABLED!!

The only thing that put a smile on my face yesterday was the arrival of my Vostro 1400. After a 7-hour flight delay (weather problems in New York), I just didn't have enough stamina left to "check-out" my lappy last night.
So, first thing this morning I started up my 1400 and quickly found myself struggling with Vista. Next obvious thought was to wipe off Vista and install XP. So I put in my XP Pro cd and lo behold, the " Install Windows XP Pro" button was DISABLED

WTF? Is this related to Vostro or something else? Is this because my XP is not slipstreamed? Where do I go from here?

 

was it a cd from a previous dell? if so, im pretty sure you can't use them like normal copies of an OS

 

well..you can always get used to Vista. it doesn't take long to get used to (well it didn't for me) but once you start to figure it out its really not that bad..plus its got some cool "new features" that xp never had. you could just take your time to get used to it.

 

good point...and also, do you have enough RAM? i would get pretty frustrated too without enough RAM

 

No, it ISN'T a Dell cd

 

It was disabled because you were in Vista. Boot to the CD and try it

 

Really!? I thought Vista was "backward compatible"

 

It is in the sense that it supports Win XP compatibility mode and "should" support application written in XP but you can't install XP from Vista. As paladin732 said, you need to hard boot on the XP cd directly, then you can wipe your Vista partition and install XP. It was the same when trying to install 98 from XP.

 

I believe you fail to understand what backwards compatible means. You will need to boot off the XP CD and use the CD to wipe the HD. Also, you are going to need to slipsteam drivers onto the disc so you can read your hard drive (XP came out a long time before the Santa Rosa chips, so it can not utilize the hardware until you have the the driver).

Having said that, since you tried to install XP while booted into Vista, you really lack a fundamental understanding of what is going on here. I am going to be blunt and just say avoid the whole XP issue altogether, it takes some extra work and configuration, and since you could not even get the disc started properly, you are going to have trouble with other stuff as well. You gotta walk before you can run.

 

I agree, so i am going to be objective as well. On one hand, there are tutorials on this forum showing you how to install XP on SantaRosa laptops, on the other hand, those do require at least a certain level of understanding (software/hardware). Seeing you were trying to install an older operating system from within a newer OS and couldn't understand the reason why it failed, may be you should stick with vista and when you are comfortable with in and outs of OS, you can try to install xp again.