According to my research on the matter the issue is driver support for certain hardware in the laptop itself. I know installing XP on that machine is possible because I've seen it done, but it apparently requires driver and file manipulation that is beyond my current skills.
Not sure honestly; nothing I've read went into detail. I have an installation disk of XP but every attempt to install on my laptop ended in a blue screen.
Well I found an article online that gives a method of slipstreaming SP3 onto a disk to install the OS on that specific laptop. But, how would I go about doing your suggestion?