Thank you so much for your help. The SATA/IDE issue jogs my memory -- that very well could be an issue and might explain why an (ancient) copy of partition magic is not able to help me at all either!
I *AM* able to "disable" the SATA in the BIOS menus but there's no corresponding switchover to IDE. I was hoping it would simply default to IDE, but if I disable SATA, it's dead. I can't boot at all from the optical drive after making this change.
At least when SATA is enabled, I get to go through the initial motions of starting an OS install (it fails of course, but the point it that it is more than what happens with SATA disabled, which is nothing)
BSOD - similar to what I saw. (mine didn't specify a kernel issue)
Re: purchasing recovery CD's - I would have gladly done that but HP will not make them available. Another poster on this forum recommended a third party software vendor of recovery media, but they didn't have the right media either.
Re: Windows XP being an elderly OS. Yeah, I know it's old ;-), but I had not considered it might simply NOT WORK with this Touchsmart (which is also old, but only "middle-aged").
I will try installing Windows 7 32 bit instead and see if that works. if so, I may be inclined to purchase annother license key.
HP - Specific question: do you happen to know if I can get the HP-origin touch-screen overlay software to run under Win 7 or must it be Vista (this computer originally had Vista).