[Space Wrangler]

but the geeks at Best Buy claim that there are keys in the motherboard or something, so that if I try to install XP on this Visduh machine, it will not work, and that further, the various drivers in the machine will not work with XP. Does anyone know if this is true or not?

The 'geeks' at Best Buy are nothing more than salespeople masquerading as computer techs. If you forget every piece of technical info you ever knew, the one tidbit that you would want to hold on to is that the 'geek squad' knows little more than what they have been told to tell you by their corporate overlords. Should a knowledgeable, competent technician somehow slip through the hiring process, he won't make it long before he is run out of the store on a rail for daring to actually help someone.

In short, the geek was blowing smoke up your south end. XP can be run on a partition, as a virtual machine, or as the sole OS on your laptop. 'Keys' in the motherboard to prevent an XP install!! That's rich!

I had one tell me that the malfunctioning DVD drive in my moms laptop was a virus.

[padre35]

“but the geeks at Best Buy claim that there are keys in the motherboard or something, so that if I try to install XP on this Visduh machine, it will not work, and that further, the various drivers in the machine will not work with XP. Does anyone know if this is true or not?

The ‘geeks’ at Best Buy are nothing more than salespeople masquerading as computer techs. If you forget every piece of technical info you ever knew, the one tidbit that you would want to hold on to is that the ‘geek squad’ knows little more than what they have been told to tell you by their corporate overlords. Should a knowledgeable, competent technician somehow slip through the hiring process, he won’t make it long before he is run out of the store on a rail for daring to actually help someone.

In short, the geek was blowing smoke up your south end. XP can be run on a partition, as a virtual machine, or as the sole OS on your laptop. ‘Keys’ in the motherboard to prevent an XP install!! That’s rich!

I had one tell me that the malfunctioning DVD drive in my moms laptop was a virus.”

Hear Hear!

XP can be run on 64 mb as well, the recommened MB notwithstanding.

Geek Squad is a marketing ploy folks.

[Still Thinking]

Should a knowledgeable, competent technician somehow slip through the hiring process, he won't make it long before he is run out of the store on a rail for daring to actually help someone.

Or locked up in a mental institution from working with those clowns, or just quit and get a real job.