New dell dimension preloaded with Vista. Owner can't function without certain apps that currently are not Vista compatible. She finally talked Dell into cutting her a deal on the purchase of replacement XP software but not until they gave her a big attitude and suggested the problem was her fault. My problem is that the machine freezes once the XP drivers are loaded during the initial stages of the install. I've tried wiping the drive with Acronis but received a "no hard drive installed" error. Does anyone know if Vista protects the drive from being wiped? Have you succeeded in repartitioning a drive w/Vista?