I decided to TAKE Vista Ultimate for a spin since I had a disc for it. Don't much care for it, too many problems.

Anyway, so I put my XP Pro CD in and tried to boot from it so I could reinstall, after the "press any key to boot from the CD" message the screen remains black and setup never starts, but the hard drive has constant activity. It remained this way for nearly 2 hours.

I used Vista's setup to remove the Vista partition. XP setup STILL won't start. Any suggestions?I would zero the drive just to make sure nothing on it is messing up the setup.
I prefer DBAN for that. Depending on who made the drive, the diagnostic tool from the manufacturer might be able to do a zero wipe.This drive runs 3 partitions, and a second drive with 3 more. I don't want them all wiped.Will the XP setup boot if you disconnect the offending hdd? Good idea, however...

I just installed Fedora. It seems to have fixed my problem. After Fedora's setup finished, I put in the XP setup disc and restart. Setup started RIGHT up. Should be fine from here. Thanks Deerpark.LOL
Well leave it to a LINUX distro to clean up Vista's mess. haha my thoughts EXACTLY