Can't load XP on a BLank new drive

I have a HP Pavillian Media Center (m8530f pc)it came loaded with Vista Home Premium. The hard drive went out and I had to replace it with a new hard drive(a 1TB Westeren digital).it is a blank drive. Itried to load xp home and I got a "stop" message before it loaded windows xp. The CD I'm using is a full version of xp home. Some techs I have talked to tell me that if my pc came with Vista, it will not let me downgrade to xp, that my pc does not include an xp driver. What can I do to get xp on a blank drive if my pc has no xp driver? Is there a bootable xp driver that I can install? Then try to install the xp?:

 

What they may mean, is that there won't be any drivers at all for your computer, no sound, video, mobo, or whatever. I really doubt this, but anyway, welcome to MajorGeeks, someone should be able to help you with this situation.

My first guess would be for you to go into your bios and change the disk type from Sata/AHCI to IDE.

But, this page shows only vista drivers. So, you may have to stick with that:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3740333&#

 

I ran into this issue a several months ago when attempting to change a PC from Vista to XP. Using a new hard drive, I attempted a clean install of XP. Once installed, the PC went into an endless rebooting cycle and would not load XP.

After spending two hours scouring HP's web site, I discovered the problem is rooted in the BIOS: It is set to search for the restore partition on the OEM HP drive at start up. If it can't find the OEM restore partition it won't load Windows.

No BIOS update was available from HP or ASUS (the manufacturer of the motherboard) to get around this. Unless you're d*mn sure of what you're doing, DO NOT ATTEMPT to use a BIOS flash or upgrade from a "similar" ASUS or HP model to fix the problem - doing so can cause issues up to and including destroying the motherboard!

Bottom line: Unless you can find a BIOS update on HP's website that fixes the issue for your specific model you're stuck using the copy of Vista that came preinstalled. Now that Windows 7 is out and some people are upgrading, check the HP support site for possible BIOS updates and cross your fingers.

If and when you're ready for a new PC, skip the mass market PCs and either build your own or have a local computer shop build one for you. You may pay a few more dollars up front; however you'll have a better quality PC without issues like this down the road.