xp restore disks, from a whipped hdd

Trumandrummer

Ok so, im thinking about installing windows vista, because I was gonna reformat anyways since my computer is seriously messed up right now.. and I wanted to try vista

my question is, say i don't like vista after I install it, for whatever reason.
And I want to put xp media center back on there...

the discs that I have for media center are the full restore discs from HP, not the actual XP media center disc. Will I be able to install XP media center, with these discs from a whipped out (formatted) drive?

Thrax

If your computer is an HP, those media center discs will recover your PC to the state it was in when it was first purchased.

If your computer is not an HP, the discs won't work.

Trumandrummer

Ok yea, its an HP

I was just worried that it wouldn't work from a cleared hard-drive....(ive used the discs once, and that was to restore back to factory, but I still had the original xp media center installed)

I don't know much about operating systems and discs and crap lol

thanks a lot man

Trumandrummer

Ok so I have a new problem/question........

im aware that after you have installed xp or vista on an internal drive, you cannot resize the main partition in order to make new partitions, even though I have tons of free space, which kind of sucks....

I figured that when I ran the windows install that it would ask about partitions and stuff, that way I can make about 3 partitions before windows is installed, but with my restore CDs it didnt give me the choice because it simply "restores to factory settings" which was 2 partitions (one was only like 4gb for recovery and one was the remaining space)

So im like stuck, and Im a little bummed out, I kinda wanted to try and set up like a dual boot or something, and use my external as the storage for all my files, but its not looking like im gonna be able to partition it like I wanted to.

Can someone please help me out here?