Papa Ray

I am now the owner of a laptop (dell) that I bought. I am having nothing but problems with Vista (and don't want to have to re- learn a new OS anyway) and want to downgrade to XP Home. Which is the OS I have been using for the last several years on my desktop.

I have never had anything to do with loading an OS. I know that I need a copy of the OS (full edition) and suspect that I will have to wipe the drive clean.

Can someone direct me to a thread or website where I can be lead by the hand? I don't want to wind up with an expensive paperweight.

BTW, I have been unable to get your search function here to work. It errors out.

Thanks for any reply.

Papa Ray

sobeit

first you need to go to dells website to see if they have xp drivers for your system. If they dont, and you try to install xp, you will have problems.

just use xp and boot your system then choose formatting the hard drive during the phase of choosing hard drive partition to install.

You may want to delete the vista partition and recreate the partition before installing xp.

If your drive is sata, you may need to have drivers and at boot of xp cd, you need to ress f8 to install.

tosh9i

Do you have a windows xp installation cd

Papa Ray

Thanks for the replys. No I don't have any XP as of yet. As I stated, I think I need what is called the Full Edition of XP home. As I understand it anyway.

I don't think Vista will let me load XP, or that is what I have gathered. It just tells you that you are attempting an invalid something. I'm not clear on any of this "downgrading" and it seems not many have done it, or at least that I can google.

One author stated he had to completely wipe his drive using a third party program and then partition with the same program and then load XP (but he never completed the operation, because his disk was defective or something...he never posted again, to let us know what happened when he got a new XP OS.

I'm not sure how to make the system go to the CD drive, as I understand it, you have to go into some part of the system and tell it where to boot from if your not using a floppy. Is that correct, if so, how do you accomplish this?

All of this must be written somewhere, but all I can find is info on UPgrading.

Thanks again

Papa Ray

tosh9i

Put simply, there is no "downgrade" from Vista to XP.

From what I read, people just format their computers and do a clean installation of Windows XP using their cd.

If you do get a Windows XP Full Home Edition CD, then you need to go into BIOS (hit delete as your computer starts up), from there you should see a list of options ( I think the one you want would be the second one down), after that it should say something like, change boot order, or change boot sequence, I can't quite remember, but you would change the first one to your cd drive.

I say that you have three choices:

1. Stay with Vista

2. format hard drive and install Windows XP

3. Create another partition so you can install windows xp on it. That way, you'll have both Vista and Windows XP.

Papa Ray

Thanks for everyone's assistance.

Papa Ray

JL_COG

Need to know your HDD make and size to advise how to prepare it as very large HDD's have various requirements for formating depending on their size and the intended OS.
Also need a legal XP home or pro CD with a valid product key.
You need to know how to get into your BIOS (or CMOS setup) at startup in case booting from CD is not enabled.

BMR777

You have a couple of options. You can either wipe Vista off completely and start fresh, or you can install XP alongside Vista.

Also, when buying a copy of XP, you can either buy a Full Retail copy of XP or an OEM copy of XP. The main difference is price and licensing. The OEM version is cheaper than the Retail version by over $100, but it can only be installed on one computer. The retail full version costs more, but it can be installed on another computer if your current computer ever dies. A Retail version cannot be installed on two computers at the same time though.

BMR777

raycon6789@hal-

This is a bit later than these other comments, but I have the same desire. I don't want to have to learn a new system just to pad Bills pockets. I use XP Home and am quite happy with it. Have any of you guys been successful with the change over from Vista to XP. I habe a laptop bought with Vista loaded and want to remove it and install XP Home. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ray

faradd

i personally hate vista, i have it installed on the laptop and is very annoying. as lost of people have recommended install xp on another partition if things go wrong you still have vista. what about changing the themes mate. you can download xp themes that will change the way your vista looks and behaves.

l_b_rex

1. Turn on Pc and insert Full version of XP Home cd
2. turn off computer
3. Turn PC back on and enter BIOS
4. Select "Boot" tab
5. Select "Boot Device Priority"
6. Change "Boot Device 1" to "cdrom Group"
7. Press F10 to save and exit
-> The windows XP cd will load.
8. Select Full Installation and it will walk you through the install. At one point it will ask about creating partitions. Seeing as you are not familiar with this I recommend leaving the partitions as they show and just continue.

Notes: Make sure you can find the drivers on Dell website because some will not be built in to the cd, such as Network Adapter, chipset, video and audio. These are the ones that are usually missing for a normal desktop PC that doesn't have wireless internet built in.

Don't worry about making a "paper weight". There is no way to screw up to that point. It will either boot to xp after or it won't. This can be done and should not be difficult at all, however there is always a possibility that your PC configuration may require more steps. For example, with my PC I have to install raid drivers off a floppy disk before my xp cd will allow me to complete the xp install. This is rare but possible.

I recommend trying it on your own and if it doesn't work come back and we can try to help. Or just pay to have it done for you.

The most important things are to make sure you can find xp drivers for you parts. If you can't find them than DO NOT install xp. The internet will not work and that is what you will likely want the most.
Good luck and cheers!

oldmn

What I did was replaced the 80 gig HDD with a 160 $75 and got a OEM copy of XP Pro $135. then installed XP to the new HDD.
First you have to make sure you have all the drivers downloaded for your hardware and burn to CD.
Once I had the install completed with no issues.
I then took the 80 and installed it in an external HDD enclosure, repartitioned and formated it and now use it for storage.
Note: The reason I did it his way was if there was a problem, I still had the original drive in tact so I could reinstall.

sobeit

You CANNOT use oem on a system that already had an operating system on it. OEM is only for a newly built system. If you are downgrading you are legally bound to purchase a full retail version of xp.

oldmn

That funny, They didn't seem to have a problem with it when I activated it.

sobeit

just because it was activated don't mean it was right. Also dont be surprised if one of these days its declared non-genuine so use at your own risk.