I have tried this before with a laptop I had, a Acer. It had Vista on it when I got it but I had a buddy switch it to XP and it ran great.
It caught a bug and I tried to fix it using the Vista backup disc I made but never could get it to load.
I had a Dell Desktop that ran on XP and ended up using the Dell software to get the thing working again. Finally decided it was time for a new laptop. But the old one worked fine, except I never could load the wireless LAN specs back on.
My suggestion is to go on Ebay and buy either a Vista or a XP professional home program, they should be pretty cheap and reload from that. Should work just fine.
If I could get XP on that machine I would be thrilled.
I run XP on my Desktop and it is rock solid.
The thing is, I don’t have the XP OS disc.