Did they or one of them detect your SATA hdd?If your optical drive is connected to an nForce SATA Controller, which is set to "AHCI mode", you will get problems even when you are running Vista again. Recommendation (as already written): You should either a ) connect your CD/DVD device to an IDE Controller or another SATA Controller, which is running in "IDE mode", or b ) disable AHCI within the BIOS. Vista installed and runs fine. I'm on it now. I don't really see how the CD/DVD is making any problems. This is just wierd...Let me explain better: Ok, XP Setup PE Installation detected both drives on both of my attempts, but it said that my 80 GB was not a compatible XP partition (toyed around deleting the partition n'such). I thought ****, rebooted and tried again and it installed on my 80GB. Windows booted up for the first time, but 3 secs of the bootscreen and BOOM Blue screen error. So then I used a different driver on another burnt CD and installed again. This time it just wouldn't let me install on the 80GB given that it's not an "XP compatible partition" so I installed on the 500GB (which I wanted to use for Media, etc.) but the same scenario as the first ran thru. And you think it's my DVD drive? :-\