First, be sure to create a set of recovery DVDs so you can restore Vista down the road if need be. You should find an option to do this in your Start Menu if they didn't come with the laptop. Once that's done use either DBAN or KillDisk to wipe the drive. After that your only issue may be that it's a SATA hard drive...sometimes drivers are needed during the install process.
Hope this helps,
John
P.S. You weren't able to extend the partition because of a restriction on extending the primary partition, which can cause problems.
I am trying to install XP on my new laptop, which has Vista Home Premium but I'm seriously fed up already. It's as if they've deliberately made it as difficult as possible.
My laptop is a Rock X770. I have a SATA HDD, which had 2 volumes initially but I removed one (which has left me with 20GB unallocated, and apparently Vista won't let me extend the other volume).
It won't let me format the disk.
If I boot up with an XP recovery disk, it just gives me a black screen for ages, before booting Vista as normal.
I have no idea what to do just to wipe my HDD, get rid of Vista, and get XP installed successfully. I have read other threads and I can't even seem to get past the first stage of formatting.
Please help.

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