laptop issues - due to me .. blah

yeah my mom just recently bought a laptop ( like 3 days ago ) from my uncle for 300$

its 1.5ghz, 1gb ram, all in all - decent laptop i thought
being as it's my moms, she asked me to put word on it etc so i was just about to

so i grabbed my 1gb usb drive, put the office 07 iso on it and alcohol 120% so i could mount + install it .

soon as alcohol finishes installing i get bsod'd
after the restart i get bsod'd again.

constantly getting bsod'd on the windows startup
tried safe mode, got shut down there too
i was thinking system restore to a few days earlier, but as i dont know how to get to the system restore without windows being loaded, im lost.

1.5ghz - 1gb ram, vista is on it.
i had an idea to wipe the drive and put xp ultimate on it - but as vista is installed on it, i do not want to mess it up . i've heard laptops had been made specifically for vista - ad if i tried to install xp on it, the drivers wouldnt be recognized.

bit of help.

 

well first before you go and try installing vista, try repairing xp, try chkdsk or a repair installation...

Vista will probably work, check the manufacurer's website to see that there are Vista drivers...

On older laptops, vista will (usually) install and work fine, but the visual elements, aka Aero, wont work, you'll be stuck with the Vista Basic theme. The graphics card does need to be Direct X 9 capable and you'll need about 8 GB free disk space if you're not formatting the drive...

 

fixed that - just putting on office now