Vista 64 bit

That is what I would expect Terry, but there is something queer going on!
The machine really seems to 'know' that a newer version has been tried.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that Microsoft had deliberately made it not backwardly compatible...

I agree with Jack, Microsoft do a good job producing what they do, I use XP pro on my base unit and Vista on my laptop, ok Vista in its early days was “buggy” but now no problem at all, yes you do require more “power” to run it , I will wait until the new operating system software has been out for a while and most of the bugs have been fixed + all the drivers have been updated before I change though, As for “Macs” If you are a “graphic designer” ok or you want to pay well over the top for your kit or if you want a “Label” go ahead.
Ps I hope you declared your extra earnings to the Spanish Tax man Jack

Darkmunk,

You could try to enter the BIOS (setting the boot priority to involve the CD drive) then exit to the DOS prompt and see if you can run Format or FDISK/diskpart (don’t forget to check the path).

Alternatively you might try something similar if you have a floppy drive (perhaps USB) and some old DOS disks lying around you could boot from.

Whole thing sounds bizarre – perhaps a concept dreamt up in marketing to forcibly retain Vista market share

I think shaky is right, running FDISK to clear the partitions and possibly low-level format the disk. No way Vista could survive that.

I still think the general idea is right but we betray our age here since modest further research revealed that the FDSIK command was apparently scrapped after Windows 98!

Anyway, if this problem is still persisting I found a great little site providing bootable ISOs of DOS; see: http://www.allbootdisks.com/iso.html

Use something like the excellent and free http://www.imgburn.com/ utility to burn the ISO to CD if you don't have anything appropriate.

Just repeating the comment I made in a PM:
Some newer machines have HDD controllers that are not recognised by the XP installation CD!
In these cases, Vista installs fine, but XP complains about the HDD being unable to format (or some such message).
The work around is to get hold of the XP device driver, and at the beginning of the XP installation CD manually load the SCSI/HDD driver. Then you should be able to delete the partition within the XP installation process (make sure you say you want to install a NEW installation of XP, not to repair an existing Windows).

That was the problem Terry had
Matt

Yes that's a problem with some motherboards that use a Sata raid. You need to press f6 (be quick) at the start of the XP installation. Have the device driver at the ready. Fortunately it's not too much of a problem with newer motherboards as there is an option in the Bios to run the Sata in a standard IDE mode.

Russ