Installing operating systems on old laptop

im in alot of trouble here ive never worked with old computers or laptops b4, and i was suppose to format the drve and install xp onto my freinds armada 1750 laptop, but little did i know that apperently the bios settings are in a hidden partition and since that partition is gone i cant access it also since there is no operating system it seems to boot from cd anyway, so i created a primary dos partition then inserted the xp install disk but it comes up something about cache size and minimum cache and gives me a couple options like 'BL=16'(LOOK AHEAD BUFFER IS IN CONVENTIONAL MEMEORY , SIZE IN KB and a couple other options too) but i am completly lost is it just that the laptop is too old and wont take xp? also tried win 2000 but same thing happend. any advice would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
David