The problem was with vista home edition, i suppose you're gonna tell me all 250 compuetrs had the home edition, right? *shakes head* it's really not a big deal but there were plenty of users who had the same known problem trying to go back to xp.
Some had business, others had home because we knew we were going to nuke 'em and no point in paying more for an OS that we were replacing.
All versions of Vista are basically the same kernel with certain features 'unlocked.' Home doesn't handle partitioning the HD any different than Business or Ultimate does, the File System is the SAME. What-ever this
KNOWN issue is, is more like an
UNKNOWLEDGABLE user issue. IE: the ol' ID-10-T error.
If you're talking LICENSING, you can't install WinXP with a Vista Home key, but that has NOTHING to do with the physical installation of WinXP. Buy a legitimate copy of WinXP and you're set to go. There a NO issues short of SATA drivers for newer machines not being on XP disks when you completely wipe a disk. I have 3 machines at home that all came with Vista Home on them that I wiped and installed XP on them. I since installed 7 on them, but there were no issues, short of slip-streaming drivers.
Give me some links to your known issues if you don't mind. I'd love to see them, but I'm willing to bet they're all about the slipstreaming of the Sata drivers. I've done it on my personal machines: Inspiron 1420, a E6400, Studio Hybrid, and numerous other dells for clients for my tech support business, with the exception of Precisions, I've never had a machine that couldnt' be done. Sometimes you have to root through the drivers to make sure you're installing the correct one, but it's not that hard.
I wish you lived close to me, because I'd bet a month's paycheck that I can have XP installed on your machine in under two hours.
Edit: And no, I can't shut and be happy for you because you're claiming it's rocket science to do it and it's not. Can't you shut up and say "Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and the guy who does this for a living probably does?" Would you shut up and be happy for me because I already bought a home and was happy but was spewing **** that wasn't true about Mortage stuff?