Problem installing Vista with an older Samsung Laptop

Hello community,

a friend of mine gave me her Samsung Laptop because she experienced it to be very slow. She was also getting following message when she turns the laptop on:

System Configuration Data updates
ERROR
System Configuration Data Read Error

I couldn't find any solution for the error messages, other than to install a new Bios or check the date or other bios settings. The Time & Date is right and also the bios settings don't seem to be the problem here. The third option to install a new bios can't be done because even if i wanted to I can't seem to find the Samsung NP-R40FY0B Laptop on Samsung Support page. Actually I found it on a german support page but there was no bios assigned to it.

Anyway since the laptop was also very bloated I thought the very best would be to just reinstall Vista on it. Since she paid for Vista (it has a Vista sticker on it) I thought installing Vista would be the best.

Oh boy I was wrong. The installation went fine, until to the Extraction of the files. then I was presented with following message:

Windows could not set the offline locale information. Error 0x80000001

Again no useful information on the internet other than the hard disk might be faulty. I even tried to install windows vista with a different hard disk which I had laying around here, but no success.

What other things I tried:
Unhide the Samsung Recovery Partition and mark as active with DISKPART on the Vista Recovery Console -> Failed because the changes don't seem to stick!!! AFter a reboot the partition is hidden not active!

Format the partition several times, also tried to install Vista on a different Partition or just delete the partition and make new ones to install Vista -> No success

So what other options do I have right now, other than to return the laptop which before was "just" slow and now it is no use at all with no operation system. I am actually open to everything right now.

Thanks in advance!