Xp On An Acer Netbook

[Tony Harrison]

I'm posting this here as I know there are a few people on here who're good with computers.

Yesterday I tried to install XP on a laptop, both from a USB stick and from an external DVD drive (quite an old one though). Each time, the machine boots from the device, and setup starts. The setup files are loaded into the RAM ok it would seem, but at the point where setup would list the HDD partitions, I get blue screen of death saying Windows had to shut down to prevent damage, blah blah blah.

The PC is brand new, and works fine with Linux. BIOS and startup are fine, and it appears in good health. I'm wondering if the USB stick and DVD drive are conflicting with the HDD controller, and that this is preventing setup from working. I know plenty of other people have installed XP from an external device on the same machine with no issues at all. My copy of XP is legit and good (I've used it four or five times before, anyway), so I'm wondering if it could be the devices. But then it seems strange that I get exactly the same error with each of them.

Any ideas?

[aener]

Honest question - why not stick with Linux?

I switched over, and really like it.

Either way - is the machine itself capable of booting from a memory stick?

A friend of mine had a problem very similar to this - says he got over it by installing an application of some sort.

I'll try and speak to him - though he's gone for the holidays now.

[Tony Harrison]

I've tried memory stick and external USB drive - same error. I think that because it's a really old version of XP, it's having trouble with the SATA interface or something. You have a point though, the Linux OS is clean and easy to use. Maybe I'll give it a chance!