I just bought a used HP Pavilion with XP on eBay, to replace my old Windows Me machine — restored to original factory configuration and accompanied by original recovery disks. I bought a new laptop with Vista a couple of years ago, and all I can say is “NEVER AGAIN!”. It’s not just Microsoft that’s losing sales over this worthless Vista junk.
I'll never buy an HP computer again. They don't believe in end users being able to actally reinstall the OS from scratch. They don't have driver disks available especially for a reinstallation of video codecs for DVD's. I prefer Dells, because I can always start with a bare hard drive. In fact years later, I can install operating systems that never shipped with my system and for which the periferal manufacturers no longer have divers posted online.
Please tell me you updated Windows after you got the system online.