Having issues reformatting Vista and Installing XP

I bought a Dell XPS 720 last year and it came with Vista on it. I want to reformat my computer and install XP. I'm having some issues though. I place my XP Professional CD and I press F12 to boot from the CD, everything seems like it's going right, Windows Setup is loading, and right before it should go to the screen where I should be asked to reformat and install XP, it takes me to the blue screen of death.Can anyone help me?Having issues reformatting Vista and Installing XP
short version, something's probably jacked with your hardware. bad cable, memory settings, etc.



maybe if it's set to AHCI and you don't F6 the drivers it'll BSOD though, since Windows XP doesn't support AHCI out the gate.. I don't know if it would let you make it into even reading the CD if not, though.Having issues reformatting Vista and Installing XP
If the computer is running fine and only messes up when trying install Xp then try this. Use a Xp boot disk or earlier version of windows and format the hard drive from the command prompt, then work it from their.
The problem is that this is a fairly new computer and it doesn't have a hard disk. Are you saying I should boot up from a Windows 98 CD or something?
The XPS 720 BIOS uses some weird naming schemes. In your BIOS you should have an option for each SATA drive that can be set as On, Off, or RAID. On = standard SATA mode, RAID = AHCI. Set this to On and try again.



If this fails you may need to hit F6 when prompted during the XP install to load the Nvidia chipset driver. You can get that from http://supportapj.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=au%26cs=audhs1%26l=en%26s=dhs%26releaseid=R132919%26SystemID=XPS_720%26servicetag=%26os=WW1%26osl=en%26deviceid=9843%26devlib=0%26typecnt=0%26vercnt=1%26catid=-1%26impid=-1%26formatcnt=1%26libid=27%26fileid=176721.



If this fails I'd suggest searching/posting on the Dell Community forum.



Good luck, I hope you get it working soon.
You might also want to check out http://supportapj.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/ap/shared/support/reinstall/en/reinstall_center?~ck=ln%26c=au%26cs=audhs1%26l=en%26lnki=0%26s=dhs (Dell Windows XP Center).
Thanks a ton, I'm checking those out right now.
After troubleshooting in raid setup, I can't boot up at all now. When I go into BIOS and go to boot sequence, it says that the CD ROM is not present and there doesn't seem to be an option to make it present?Brain hurting...
Ok, scratch the above post. I put the Drivers on on and I can boot from the CD. It still didn't work. It seems like I have to specify an additional device. The problem is that I don't have a floppy drive, does this mean I have to go buy one and download the drivers on the disk and then use it?
You should be able to read the extracted drivers off USB or CD, if that is the actual issue.
I'm just not sure which drivers I should be downloading.
Is it the BIOS drivers or SATA drivers that I should be using to specify the additional device during XP setup?
You want to replace Vista with XP :shock: why don't you just go back to DOS? :lol: