John3588, Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum. Boot to the XP cd and choose the option to Format the drive. You then should be able to continue to install Windows XP. If you have a Dell XP disk and a Dell Computer you will not need a key code., The OEM disk is tied to the Dell Bios.
I need to reinistall windows 7 with a downgrade to windows xp. The drive is clean (no restore partition) and I need to reinstall from the cds that were sent with the system. In looking at other comments on the web it looks confusing. I thought the cd reinstall would be fairly simple. Do you have step by step instructions so i can get back where I was? Will I have to have a key for Windows XP? Where do I get it? Will the key on the Win 7 COA work somehow?
Re-install Windows 7 with XP downgrade