Issues installing Windows XP.

About a month ago, I made the jump to Windows Vista, and honestly? I’m hating it. I really want to roll back to XP, but I’ve hit a massive wall. I went into my BIOS and set the CD/DVD drive as the primary boot device, but it just won't trigger the installation. Every time I try to get it started, I just get stuck staring at this error message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Bood device and press a key."

So, I went back into the BOOT menu and tried rearranging things—CD/DVD at #1, SATA at #2, and the third option at #3. But now, when I power up the machine, I don't even get the prompt to "press a key" to start the installer. It just skips right past everything and boots straight into the OS like nothing happened. I can't seem to force this installation to launch no matter what I do.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?
Also, would it be possible to install Windows 7 over Vista, and then maybe move from Windows 7 to Windows 7 XP?

Take a look at the POST screen and see if it actually lists your hard drive and the CD/DVD drive... if the optical drive isn't showing up there, the BIOS isn't seeing it at all. You should probably double-check your connections.
If the drive does show up, then the hardware might be fine, but maybe it’s just not reading properly, or your installation disc isn't bootable—like, maybe it wasn't burned correctly to begin with.

If you set the DVD drive as the only boot device and disable everything else in the BIOS—meaning there aren't any other boot options available—it should actually work...

goldentrucker6 said:...
Is it actually possible to install Windows 7 on top of Vista, and then eventually move up to Windows 7 XP?

Technically, you can do it, and it should run without any immediate errors, though I've found that the Windows 7 boot menu tends to "vanish" into thin air during the process.