Vista to XP

Slippin Jimmy

Is it possible to downgrade from vista to windows xp? I was thinking of buying a laptop, but I don't like vista. I think I will wait for another while till all the problems are sorted out with it. So what the plan was, well if it was possible, was to buy a laptop with vista on it, and downgrade. I was just wondering can it be done.

aidan_walsh

If you have a valid Windows XP license there should be nothing stopping you reformatting a newly bought computer and installing XP on it.

Slippin Jimmy

aidan_walsh wrote:

If you have a valid Windows XP license there should be nothing stopping you reformatting a newly bought computer and installing XP on it.

Would this just be a matter of putting in the disc abd following the onscreen instuctions?

aidan_walsh

Pretty much.

Slippin Jimmy

aidan_walsh wrote:

Pretty much.

Would any settings have to be changed at all? Would the laptop work the same, or would it be a bit slower?

aidan_walsh

You may have to hunt down XP specific drivers for some of your laptops hardware, depending on the manufacturer and model, but you shouldn't have to do much more than that. The laptop should work the same, and I can't imagine any reason outside of crappy drivers that would cause XP to run anything slower than Vista would.

Anti

aidan_walsh wrote:

You may have to hunt down XP specific drivers for some of your laptops hardware, depending on the manufacturer and model, but you shouldn't have to do much more than that. The laptop should work the same, and I can't imagine any reason outside of crappy drivers that would cause XP to run anything slower than Vista would.

Infact it will probably be quicker.

Slippin Jimmy

Anti wrote:

Infact it will probably be quicker.

I was actually hopeing someone would say that. Thanks for the reply's lads. Oh yeah, just one more thing. What is your opinion on Vista?

pduffy50

DonnybrookGhost wrote:

I was actually hopeing someone would say that. Thanks for the reply's lads. Oh yeah, just one more thing. What is your opinion on Vista?

It's Microsoft

Slippin Jimmy

pduffy50 wrote:

It's Microsoft

Haha lol. But seriously?

sham69

I just did this on Saturday as vista was driving me mad.
Unfortunately I can't find a lot of drivers , especially the Xga one for the display.
My bluetooth is not working and it took me ages to find the drivers for the wireless card to get it back online (dell inspiron).
I am considering going back to vista but will give it a day or two before I give up.
Seemingly my problem is the bass system drivers have to be installed first or something.
My opinion on vista, hate it.
Its so slow, looks great but would take a lot of getting used to.

Slippin Jimmy

sham69 wrote:

I just did this on Saturday as vista was driving me mad.
Unfortunately I can't find a lot of drivers , especially the Xga one for the display.
My bluetooth is not working and it took me ages to find the drivers for the wireless card to get it back online (dell inspiron).
I am considering going back to vista but will give it a day or two before I give up.
Seemingly my problem is the bass system drivers have to be installed first or something.
My opinion on vista, hate it.
Its so slow, looks great but would take a lot of getting used to.

Would you think it is a lot of hassle downgrading?

zilog_jones

I'd say the amount of hassle depends almost totally on driver availability. Look at the support page for whatever laptop you're looking at and see if they have Windows XP drivers for all the important stuff. It's going to be harder with laptops than anything else as they can be finicky and only accept manufacturer-specific drivers for stuff like graphics (e.g. only Sony drivers will work with the Nvidia graphics in a Sony laptop, etc.).

Bodan

you could dual boot and have both vista and xp on it. I setup a dual boot system a few weeks ago on a new dell laptop. Xp kicked vista's ass in terms of performance.

mathias

Would this just be a matter of putting in the disc abd following the onscreen instuctions?

As long as you mean booting from the disc and formatting the hard drive , yes , and also remember to format any hidden recovery partitions that some manufacturers have a habit of putting on there.

You cannot just put the disc in and follow instructions with the operating system running !! This will just leave you in the same boat and fill your hard drive up with crap !! The amount of times Ive seen this been done to laptops, its just not funny any more !!

Also , as has been pointed out above , check and make sure you can get XP drivers for your system , there were a lot of significant changes to the hardware api ( particularly sound ) made in Vista and your laptop may have specific hardware driver requirements as a result , so play safe , and check first !!

sham69

Yeah to be honest it was a hassle downgrading.
I am strongly thinking of just re-installing vista with the cd dell gave me.
There is no competition between vista and xp with regard to performance.
The only thing I am really missing is my xga drivers. My screen looks like a 10 year old laptop. Its an inspiron 6400 and I just can't get the graphics sorted.
Good Luck with it whatever you decide.

edanto

I'm trying to downgrade at the moment, with a HP laptop. I have a HP XP install disc, but when I boot from that disc I have a problem.

It all starts ok, a typical blue screen and files loading. But then it tells me that it can't find a hard drive and the setup is quitting (no options).

This is odd in that there is a hard drive and after setup quits the laptop has no problem booting into Vista. Is this a normal problem and what's the fix, please?

subway

sham69,
did you check dell.ie?
all dell hardware, afaik, is designed for xp.
vista drivers have been produced etc, but the hardware is not vista specifuc
put your service tag in here:
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=ln&lnki=0

edanto,
call hp support, they should be able to advise,
its probably a driver needed

edanto

Hp support wrote:

Monday, May 14, 2007 6:42 PM] -- Hazari Prasad S says:
To install the operating system on your system, it is necessary to first disable the "SATA Native Mode" in the BIOS setup screen. Please follow the following steps to install the Windows XP operating system on your system:

1. Open the BIOS setup screen on your system using "F10" key after starting the system.
2. Desable the SATA Native mode by first clicking on "System configuration" and then selecting "Device Configurations".
3. Save the current settings.
4. Use the operating system discs to install the operating system.

So far, so good.