Hi lasvegaswireman,
Thanks for your prompt reply.
I did come across Daniel's article a few days ago (useful article by the way) and tried to create a slipstreamed CD with XP and SP3.
I created the ISO on an Intel machine with XP, rather than the intended AMD (15-n048ca) system. So I had to manually extract (what I thought were) the appropriate drivers. When it got to the Raid drivers in the XP install (F6), it came back indicating that the drivers were corrupt. Obviously the wrong ones.
Oh, by the way, yes I do have my recovery DVD's, files, etc and I have set the BIOS for legacy and non-secure boot as per Daniel's and others instructions.
It is a GPT HDD. I'm also trying to find info about what is on each partition and how to access them for repartitioning. I don't want to touch the 260MB EFI partition since that's critical to Win 8. However, I don't know if the 400MB partition is fully used or if I can reduce its size a little to make room for a boot loader partition. Worse comes to worse, I can delete the partition since I have the recovery disks. I need to have a boot loader within the first 100GB. I did manage to reduce the Win 8 partition to make room for XP and also create a data partition without affecting the recovery parts (so far).
(if you have any info on that, that would be a bonus. :) )
Unfortunately Win 8 came pre-installed, so I don't have an OS DVD or a Key to do a fresh install with my own preferred set up. I tried to get the key from HP before without success. So in addition to not being able to install the OS (only the entire system to factory default from the recovery disks), I can't even download some Additions to my Win 8 since it asks for the product key. If I had the key, I could also have set up the drive completely differently that would make it more compatible with XP, but that is a moot issue at this point.
Any way, back on topic...
I have subsequently gone back to the AMD SATA driver file and have found some other drivers which may be more suitable, so I will be trying to create another slipstreamed CD. I also have a USB floppy so I may just copy them their and try various combinations when the F6 prompt comes along.
I'll report back if I have any success (good or bad).
thanks again.