EggXpert

I bought the Asus M51TA-X2 about a week ago.  I was hoping I could could dual-boot between XP Professional and Vista so that I could get used to Vista but still have XP which I'm much more comfortable with.  After fiddling around a bit in Vista and verifying that the machine works, I set to work on installing XP.

So I put my XP (slipstreamed SP3) cd into the drive and boot it up.  It goes through the usual steps until right before it would ask me to hit enter to continue, R for recovery console, or F3 to quit.  Instead it blue screens :(

I thought perhaps it was a bum cd drive of some sort, so I tried using an external cd drive (usb).  It got slightly farther, to the partitioning, but didn't find any harddrives to install to.  Then I tried using an external harddrive (usb) as well.  It recognized the external hdd so I told it to start installing there.  After it copied the files and rebooted so it could start installing, it immediately said it could NOT find hal.dll and stopped.

Both the internal cd drive and harddrive are SATA, which makes me think its entirely a driver issue.  However, I was under the impression that XP SP2 had SATA drivers, so maybe these laptop devices are too different.  I don't have an external floppy drive handy, so I don't know how to continue.  Can I perhaps put the drivers I think I need (Windows XP --> Pro/Home --> Integrated/Mobo --> Radeon HD 3200 on ATi's download page) on the XP disc?

Sorry for my long post, but here are the system's specs..not that the newegg page doesn't have most of them:

Mobo: AMD M780G
Processor: AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-82(2.20GHz)
Optical drive: DVD Super Multi - TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L633A (SATA)
HDD: 250GB - Hitachi HTS543225L9A3 (SATA)

I would greatly appreciate any help :D

edit>it could NOT find hal.dll

Since Vista was created after XP. XP sees Vista installation and thinks "WTF is that!? How do I deal with it!?"

The way to properly do it would be to have both XP and Vista disks. Use Vista installation disk to wipe out any of the partitions present, and basically start out with an empty, partition-less hard drive. Then pop the XP installation disk in, and create 2-3 partitions, 1 for XP, another for Vista, and possibly another for your files. Install XP onto the 1st partition, then install Vista onto the second.

Before you mess around with software installs, make sure you have drivers on hand for XP and Vista for different laptop components, such as network cards, video card, etc.

you should follow the guide:

vista installed first: 

 http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm

xp installed first:

so the first guide will be fine.  

SergeiV--> Alright, so if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the XP install bluescreens because it doesn't know what to do with the vista install.  Wouldn't it, then, do the same thing when I used the external optical drive?  I'm not trying to come off as being mean, I just don't see how removing the existing partition set-up.  It was not able to install even with both external drives, which seems to me like a chipset driver problem, as do the rest of the issues.  I think its bluescreening because it doesn't even see the optical drive, and I think its not seeing any drives because it doesn't have recent/correct chipset SATA drivers.

intelguy--> The article you linked says nothing of doing anything to the XP disc and the only change to Vista was to shrink it's partition.  This was done for me as the system came w/ half the harddrive partitioned as D: DATA.  I deleted the partition and rebooted into the xp disc.  It bluescreen just as it had before.

sorry, not sure how to install xp on a vista. i have only used vista +linux.

Concur with Sergei, adding that you are having either media issues (bad XP disc) or your slipstreamed XP disc is missing / cannot locate ciritical system files of the proper version.

Or your slipstreamed disc is built for desktops and can't see all the specialized laptop hardware on your asus laptop. (missing drivers)

I had the same problem when installing XP on my new m51va (Australian version?)

In the BIOS, look for IDE Configuration and set the SATA from "Enhanced" to "Compatible"... You'll notice over on the far right hand side of the screen  that the help section seems to already know of our problem :)

 It has nothing to do with Vista (why would it?)  or the CD media (noobs!)

 Hope this was of some help ...