[cawleym1]

No. Megabites. I think they did really try, they kept calling me as they had it on the bench. Not sure why it would not happen. The Vista came pre loaded. I was thinking that the Compaq hardware could be dedicated to Vista? they could't even load it on a partition on the new HD.
Anyway I got my Autocad running by setting it as Administator and it works. I now like the old disc to act as an external. Knowing my luck something won't work.

[philthomas]

I cannot see why they were unable to install XP on a seperate partition or indeed a new HDD, there are no machines that would be clever enough to know what was being installed on them. They are all made from empty, dumb components.
It's possoble that they had issues finding XP drivers for some of the hardware, but this would not prevent XP being installed. it would simply mean that some components might not fuction properly.

Anyway , as Carbon said you shouldn't have any problems putting it in an external enclosure, providing you have ordered a SATA version and of course the drive hasn't been messed with,or droppped, by the Megabites goons

[cawleym1]

Yes I have ordered a SATA adapter. I went to the Compaq site. and they gave instructions on how to do it. It did seem complecated, but that's just me.

Many thanks for your input.