Going from Vista to XP

Hi all,
fancy helping me solve a problem thats giving me countless sleepless nights? Ok, it goes like this.... I agreed to help a friend to get a simple little second hand PC so that she can connect it to her TV and use it as a media centre. I found a nice little Compq Evo (2ghz, 512mb ram, 40gb hdd) and was running XP. I (like a fool) decided to install Vista Ultimate as it has the built in media centre. This is where the fun begins, i knew it needed a TV out graphics card but didnt remember that it only has PCI slots, no PCI express slots. i ordered a graphics card off ebay for the PCI slot. when trying to install the the graphics card it said that it cant support Vista, will only run on XP, ok, dosent sound too hard. i inserted an xp disc and rebooted. Upon reboot i didnt get the "press any key to boot from cd rom", panic begins. i got the hard drive out of the computer and connected it to another computer via an external hard drive cradle and formatted it. Since then i get nothing. I get the regular bios startup and then goes to a black screen with the flashing underscore symbol. Now im lost, funny thing is if i insert the vista DVD again, its comes up"press any key to boot from DVD" but when i inert the XP disk it just dosent want to know. The IT shop wants atleast £30 to rectify the issue. as its not my computer and was bought cheap - i dont want to spend too much money but will if i have to. A friend and i have spent hours trying to get somewhere but with no luck. The knowledge of you guys is my last hope, any advise would be greatly appreciated. You deserve a round of applause simply for taking the time out to read my short novel here lol.
Thanks!

Welcome to D-A-L.

If you get the "press any key to boot from DVD" message with the Vista media and ~not~ the XP media, is the XP media a copy? (ie; not "Factory" bootable media)

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Location: Alberta, CanadaD-A-L Hardware Scan

Hi Dan,
Hope your well. The CD is a copy that works on several other computers. I did think of this so i tried an official copy of xp that came with an old laptop of mine but still no luck.
Kind regards.

An "official copy" from a manufacturer will only work with the manufacturer's computers. You will have to use the restore disk that came with it or get a retail version of XP. Newegg.

Iv used the original XP on another PC and it works but is limited to a 30 day trial?? The computer didn't come with a restore disk, it was bough second hand. I'm properly baffled!?!?

Every copy of XP has to be activated with in 30 days after installation or the system becomes unusable. At that time when you log in all you will get is a prompt to activate XP and if you decide not to do that it will log you back out. What they are doing is checking to make sure that your serial number is legal and hasn't been pirated. Is it not letting you activate your copy? Perhaps you obtained a pirated serial number.

Thanks for the help fella but i think were straying from the point. all my cds are in 100% working order. The official copy of XP does work on other pcs and works without limitation for 30 days. My copied version is of a student edition and can be register to multiple computer legally. I have even tried putting a different hard drive into the PC and i get the same result. Can anything besides the HD be damaged by re/formatting??
Thanks.

It sounds to me like your computer isn't recognizing the disk. Have you recently tried the disk in another computer? Have you tried another optical drive in the computer in question? The cd laser might be out or the cd could be damaged. A reformat shouldn't have damaged the hard drive or the computer. The BIOS is recognizing that a bootable dvd is in the system so it is recognizing the drive & the boot priority settings are correct.