I just bought a new Accer laptop that came with Vista but some of my applications are not vista compactible so I want to change it to XP...please help on the required steps.

The SATA hard drive hurdle is just one of many you will encounter during this tedious task. And in the end you may still not find every driver required to make it fully functional. You may also find that a bios change is required to make your machine work properly in XP. Not an easy task for the faint of heart. I feel your pain but there's no easy solution. All I can suggest is to try many hours of reading and searching first and gather as many "likely" or "possible" drivers as you can find. Then if you feel up to the task, ease ahead with caution. The frustration level will increase to unbearable stage on about day 3 or 4, if not sooner. A good place to start is on the manufacturers website, talk forum (if one is available). Use of the SEARCH feature is a must.... without it you will never last long enough to possible read all the material.

Notebooks (unlike desktops) cannot use generic drivers, they must have specific drivers from the notebook maker OR "hacked for laptops" drivers. Here's a few links that might help you with this part of the tremendous task at hand.

http://www.driver7.com/
http://www.omegadrivers.net
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com
http://www.notebookdriverdownload.com
http://www.laptops-drivers.com

windows 7 suppose to solve this
i remember beta version and manny as mi soundmax did t had vista drivers