Is there anybody out there that can help me? I do not like Vista and bought a Windows XP to load on my new laptop.....How do I do this safely?

First of all, if you do remove Vista and install XP, you may void your warranty.

You do not want to delete the EISA partition

You will first want to make sure you have all the XP drivers for your laptop, and have them burned to a CD or DVD which ever your optical drive can read.

What brand, model etc. do you have.

Gateway T- Series

You will have to go to Gateway website and download the XP drivers for all the parts of your computer. i.e. you will need to make sure you have the driver for at least the following; storage controller, network adapter, display adapter. The ones I listed are a must, since you will need to connect to the internet after installing and without the ones I listed you won't be able to.

Click on the "Start" button, at the bottom where it says "start search" type in "device manager" then look towards the top and click on "Device Manager" It will open up, and you will need to click on the individual items I listed and make a note of what network adapter etc you computer has and then go to gateway's website and get the "XP drivers" for them and save them to a folder that you can then burn to a disk. I would save all the needed drivers to one folder e.g. "C:\XP drivers" so it will be easier to burn, after you get them, just select the entire folder and burn it to a disk.

I can't stress this strongly enough, DO NOT DELETE THE RESTORE / EISA PARTITION ON YOUR HARDDRIVE. This will be a small partition 4 MB - 80 MB that is needed to restore your computer in case you want to or in case something goes wrong with the install.