Why does technician say XP cannot be installed on acer laptop

[carege]

Technician installed Windows 8 on Acer laptop but we could not understand how to use it. Took the laptop back to have Windows XP installed instead but he said it could not be installed. I want to know why this is. I wasn't there and my sister doesn't understand computers like I do.

Thank you for any information you can offer.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

If the laptop is new enough there may very well be no Windows XP drivers available for the hardware. Without drivers you can't install it.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Also, XP has reached it's end of life/support.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle

 

[hang-the-9]

Try 7, better than XP or 8.

Plus if you don't have the license for XP you can't install it.

 

[akula2]

Technician installed Windows 8 on Acer laptop but we could not understand how to use it. Took the laptop back to have Windows XP installed instead but he said it could not be installed. I want to know why this is. I wasn't there and my sister doesn't understand computers like I do.

One of the reasons why OMEs say is to promote the new Windows OS.
However, genuine reasons are like the missing AHCI/SATA support in the Windows XP. Even then, computers could be installed on such Hardware. Say, first install XP in 'IDE' mode. Once installed, later do the driver upgrade for the 'Primary IDE Controller' to support AHCI/SATA. Once upgraded, reboot to change into 'AHCI' from 'IDE' mode in the BIOS.

Perhaps Hardware/Memory limitations are genuine. So it depends...

 

[carege]

Best answer selected by carege.