Thanks for your help so far, but my inspiron hasnt got a floppy drive, only dvd. Have to burn all the stuff on CD I guess. If theres no answer to this question till tomorrow evening, I gonna write a mail to the Dell support. In 2 weeks Im going to fly to US for an internship (I am German), and I bought this Notebook to work there with designing programs that doesnt run on Vista. It would be worthless for me if you cant install XP :(

Message Edited by Loonytom on 08-11-2007 05:32 PM

Omg, thats the same thing I am just trying. Just wanted to ask almost exactly the same thing, got an Inspiron 1520.

According to the guy from Geek Squad, this has been a popular request. So I guess lots of new laptop users are trying to get rid of Vista. heh. If I get a resolution, I'll post it here.

In case this helps, here are the steps I've taken so far:

1. Wipe out hard drive with DBAN.

2. Download Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver onto floppy disk.

3. Insert WindowsXP installation CD.

4. Hit F6 during installation process.

5. Connect USB floppy disk drive with Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver on floppy disk.

6. Select "Intel(R) 82801HEM SATA RAID Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E)" as the driver to install. There are four choices total, and they are:

    + Intel(R) ICH9 SATA AHCIController (Desktop ICH9R)
    + Intel(R) 82801HEM SATA RAID Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E)
    + Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E/M)
    + Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller

7. Continue with installation.

8. Receive message: "Insert the disk labeled: Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver into drive A: Press ENTER when read."

9. Insert floppy (same floppy I used earlier) into drive and hit ENTER.

It's at this point that nothing happens. Hitting Enter does nothing. I've tried downloading other drivers, from Dell.com and from Intel.com, to no avail.

@Loonytom,

I don't have a floppy drive in my laptop either; I had to go out and purchase an external USB floppy disk drive. Ugh.

@mombodog,

I have a Vostro 1400 mobile (laptop), with the most basic features. This includes:

Processor - Intel® Celeron M® M540 (1.86GHz, 1M L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
Memory - 512MB Shared Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 1 DIMM
Hard Drive - 80G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Video Card - Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100

I hope that's enough info. Do you need other stats as well? I really appreciate your help in this!

@lonetreejim,

Thanks for the suggestion! I just started downloading nLite, when I decided to follow up on mombodog's reply, and to my astonishment...

@mombodog,

THANKS! That worked! In my BIOS under SATA Operation, I only had two choices: "ATA" and "AHCI". I selected "ATA" and the full WindowsXP installation worked! Wooo!

@Loonytom,

I hope this solution works for you as well. If not, lonetreejim's suggestion seems like a good one if you don't have an external floppy drive. I'd sell you mine now that I no longer have a need for it, but I doubt it would get to you before you leave for the US.

Thanks again everyone for your help!

Looks like it works with me too, now I also understood why it didnt work with that option enabled. I only have a win xp pro installation disk without any sevice pack here, I get a bluescreen with it. But the home edition CD works. Gonna get a XP pro disc with SP2 then it sould also work I guess. Thx much.