1st off, glad to see computing.net is still here. Ive been a member since 2002. (Forgot my account last year)... I like what you guys did to the site, more modern. :) I have a HP dv7-1243d Notebook. It came with VISTA, i want to reformat it to windows xp pro. I have a tested working cd of xp. I am 100% it works including its boot files. The problem that i am having with this laptop is this. When i start up my laptop, it asks me (Press any key to boot from CD) so of course i press enter because i WANT to reformat and thats one of the 1st steps needed. Once i hit that, the CD moves inside, i hear it, the computer is processing YET THE SCREEN IS BLANK BLACK!! Very frustrating. I waited and waited. About 10 minutes i get a blue screen ERROR. I am restoreing my win vista to factory point right now, then going to try again. But i doubt it will work. Can anyone give any pointers why i cant get past the black blank screen when trying to boot my reformat CD? Works on other computers. Its gotta be something with laptops, i have did about 3 hours of google searching. Nobody has a clear answer. Thanks ahead of time.

Well i reformated my vista to its original factory settings. Still cant boot correctly using windows xp cd.... all i get is a black blank screen. Any tips? Thanks

Finally someone having the same issue as me. I am trying to dual boot XP onto this vista machine. Same thing, the screen goes blank during the install. I even hit F6, cause I need to load the SATA drivers, and the floppy light went on, so I know I am sitting at that prompt to load drivers, but the screen is black. I will recommend that no one buy HP, because you obviously can't customize them, even if you own them!! I'm going back to Dell.

Did you check if the diskette is O.K. filesystem-wise ? You can check it while you are in Windows. Copy the contents of the diskette into hard disk. If copying completes, that means files on diskette are O.K. Then check if SATA drivers belong to your SATA drive. Other than this, you can try F5 instead of F6 to see if it works. Better, you can integrate SATA drivers into XP install media using a program called nlite. Hope the above helps. Regards SuatCINI