Hi all,

First of all, I have to recommend not to buy this laptop. It's excessively slow on preloaded Vista Home Premium.

Configuration:
Intel C2D T2130
2GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7200 128 MB
80GB 5400 RPM HD
Windows Vista Home Premium

Since it takes around 2+ mins to boot Vista (yes, I did all the tuning after reading many many web sites), I decided to give Win XP a try.

But, the XP installation just couldn't recognize the hard disk.
On the other hand, Fedora boot CD DOES recognize it.

So, basically how can I install XP on it? I do NOT want dual boot with Vista. As a matter of fact, I don't like Vista at all.

Thanks a lot!

again, do NOT buy this model laptop. I would say I will not buy any HP computers in the future.

1) Is the hard drive a SATA drive? I think another person in this forum had a similar issue with a SATA drive and Vista/ installing XP.

2) You are blaming HP for Vista's crappyness? It is more than likely not HP's fault that Vista is a resource hog and is bogging down your system. If anything blame Microsoft for ever releasing Vista and all of it's problems.

1. Thanks. I got the link from here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] stall-sata

2. Yes, I think HP is the one should be blamed. It's HP's responsibility to make sure that the hardware they put up with DOES provide relatively decent performance for the newest OS. If they cannot do this, they'd better stick with older OS, like XP.

I had another cheap DELL desktop Vostro slimtower 200:
Intel C2D 2140
ONE GB RAM
Integrated Intel Video card
7200 RPM HD

Vista runs very very well on it. You can say its HD is 7200 RPM, but it only has 1GB RAM.
I trimmed a lot Vista features from the laptop and keep everything default on the desktop.

Regards,