Vista to XP Downgrade - Comments

Yesterday I went back to Windows XP. Had no problem doing it with original XP disks and WOW what a difference. I had my speed back 5 times faster then Vista. My printer came alive again. After 5 months of Vista I will never upgrade to Vista again. Let Microsoft do their fixing bugs instead of me.

After reading this article, I'm still a little confused. My understanding was that certain vendors (Dell, Lenovo) would only provide "downgrade" CD's to owners of Vista Business & Ultimate, but not to owners of any of the "Home" versions of Vista.

However, I have a few clients whose new computers have something called "Vista Home Premium". Your article goes on to mention "If you own Vista Business or Vista Premium, explain to the rep that you want to use your Downgrade Rights to install XP Pro". So where exactly does "Vista Home *Premium*" come in? Perhaps you could clarify this for me.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sorry for the typo... fixed now. You are correct in stating that the "downgrade rights" apply only to Vista Business & Ultimate, not the Home versions.

Thanks for clariying that, Bob. I figured it was probably a typo. Leave it to Microsoft to create such an overly-complicated and confusing product matrix: three different versions of Vista (Home, Business, Ultimate); each of which is available in either a Basic or Premium edition! What genius in their marketing department came up with that? :-)

I had a computer shop install the dual boot of Windows XP on my new Compaq Presario laptop. This was after I gave Vista a fair trial and found it is way too slow for me. The only problem with the Windows XP now is the man at the shop couldn't find a driver for the sound card . Therefore, any time I want to listen to a clip, I have to switch over to Vista. I will be taking the laptop to a new shop to see if they can locate a driver. If they can, I will also have them remove Vista completely. I do NOT recommend Microsoft Vista to anyone.

When i put the xp disk in it says instal windows xp but its faded out and i cant click on it. Can u plz tell me whats wrong when it comes to downloading this crap im retarted.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you're inserting the disk while WIndows is active. You must BOOT from the install disk.

I bought an Acer XP laptop that came with the Vista upgrade option. Of course I forgot to create a recovery disk before the upgrade, but it didn't matter because there was a vendor diagnostic partition on my hard disk. I quit Vista because it was taking 10-15 minutes before it was usable. Anyway the Acer diagnostic XP recovery went well, it restored my original XP and even left my Opensuse 10.2 dual boot partition intact and usable.

I tried to replace Vista with XP Home and the install begin but then I got an error that said it couldn't copy some dll file. I can't recall what the filename is. Any solutions?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Could be a bad CD. Try cleaning it and retry the install.

Thanks for this information. But some caution is in order, as real life unfortunately doesn't always work as advertised.

I just called Dell to inquire about "downgrade rights" and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about. Even though I was ordering a computer with Vista Business, they said downgrading was only available on certain models -- and not the one I was interested in.

Very disappointing.

I replaced Vista with XP home edition. Now I cant find drivers for anything on my laptop, the model i have only has drivers for vista. I now have a new laptop that is worthless. Vista ran so slow and it wouldnt load new programs without locking up. Of course now I have nothing except a windows screen that does nothing. Bill Gates sucks.

Milton - Did you have to reformat or were you able to go back to XP and save everything? I have had a similar experience and cannot wait to get back to XP.