Vista is ruining my relationship

I recently bought a new PC for my wife with Vista basic installed. Well like a lot of other people my wife hates it and is driving me nuts to put XP into the machine. So I went out and bought a XP Pro disc and stick it in the drive just to find that the install XP tab isn't highlighted. So I reboot with the cd in the machine and try to boot from the disc. It loads all the drivers and then basically tells me that to protect the PC it needs to be shut down. I need help, I have to get Vista off the hard drive and install XP as soon as possible. Any help would be great!!!!

Hi Raydee can you give the make and model of your new system please.
Did you format the drive with the application built into the XP disk first as this can help reduce issues from the previous install?

The make is a Emachines T5088. Its a cheaper machine but I figured just installing XP instead of Vista would be simple. I can't get far enough into the XP install to do any formatting.

Use the first R and go to the Recovery console

To start the Windows Recovery Console, use one of the following methods: • Use the Windows Setup floppy disks or the Windows CD-ROM to start your computer. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press F10 or press 'R" to repair.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

Recovery Console commands
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true