Berton said:
It's my understanding that UEFI was introduced with Win8/8.1 and some features are for 64-bit only. I've done a number of Upgrades to Win10 but always from Win7 w/SP1 or Win8.1, both 32-bit and 64-bit. I have managed Upgrades on Vista machines but only by going to Win7 w/SP 1 first, haven't needed to do a clean install on a Vista or WinXP drive or a bare drive.

UEFI was around at time of VISTA, but the pcs were not generally suitable or capable in those days.

Even if pcs said they were eufi capable, early implementations were rather flakey, and it was often better to stick to a legacy bios install.

I would download the iso (probably best to choose 32 bit) from here

Tech Bench

and then create a new usb installation stick using rufus making sure to select an mbr based installation.

Then make sure bios is set to legacy bios if pc has eufi capability.

Then boot from stick, and install it.