I have a HP M8530f, it came loaded with win vista, the drive went out and I had to replace it with a new one. I have the new Blank hard drive installed. I TRIED to load win Xp on it and it will not let me, I get a "stop message" before going into windows. This is a full version of XP.I called a tech and he explained that if my computer came loaded with Vista, I would not be able to "downgrade" my system to Xp. that it will only allow me to upgrade. He explained that HP built my computer "around Vista and that the program would leave something in my motherboard which will not allow me to downgrade to Xp, even if I replaced the hard drive. I this true? What can I do to delete or disable before I can load XP?

Your "tech" is right and wrong.

Right in that the computer may have devices for which there is no XP driver, thus you can get blue screen errors during or after install.

Wrong in that there is nothing left on or in the system board that prevents you from installing XP.

According to the HP website for your system, there are no XP drivers available.

Which operating system is used with my pc? None would be the correct answer, I have a Blank hard drive. As far as the language, it would be english. By not having a driver or not having one available for my pc, Hp did make sure that I could not load the XP which would be a downgrade from vista. I will be buying a full version of win 7, see if this problem continues or loads with no problem. Anyway, it's something that users need to know before buying a system. Thanks for the comeback.

What is the stop message you were getting. It's possible it may be caused by one of the removable components of your computer and simply removing it may allow you to complete the XP install.

If you can get that far then you can try to find drivers for anything that is not working from the device manufacturer and not from HP.

I did not like Vista, but I do like Windows 7. I've been running the pre-release RC1 version since mid October with zero problems. It's rock solid and pretty much everything works, though I do have to upgrade some of my software because the vendors will not fix them to work with Windows 7. They would rather I spend more money to buy a new version.