Vista to XP Downgrade - Comments Page 6

Thanks guys for the good recommendation! This is just one more story on Dell ... bought a Dell Latitude D530 with Vista pre-installed. Discussed in detail installing XP instead at time of purchase. But XP wouldn't find the hard drive. Dell told me to install the SATA driver, which I did. But then they would do no more. After reading the lines above, found the SATA setup, and switched between ATA/ATAPI. That did the trick, and for the first time in my life I told the XP installer to go ahead and reformat the hard drive to get that Vista crap out of my system. It all worked as a charm, though I had to install lots of drivers (video, internet, sound, etc.).

some hdd controllers, raid controllers, sata controoler, smart hdd controllers, scsi controllers are not compatible with the windows xp installation cd included drivers.

if it is greyed out or if your setup cannot find any harddisks, you likely need to find a driver to use during the xp dos-like install, you have to push F6 when prompted at the bottom, and prepare a floppy disc (you need a floppy drive or usb floppy drive to do this) if you do not have this, you have to edit your XP installation disc (add drivers to it)(and burn the edited version to a bootable cd) there is a tool nlite that can do this for you, but it can be tricky, and you need to find the drivers.

it is not because of VISTA that you cannot install XP, it is because the hardware controlling your harddisks is not designed for XP, and thus requires some driver.

I want to buy toshiba notebook.I enquired the vendor about downgrade to vista business to windows Xp. They said that they have rights to downgrade. Now I want to know whether the downgrade xp behaves like normal XP? or will it create any problem? If I buy freeDos notebook from HP compaq or other manufacturer ,can I install vista business separate?
Is the freeDOS notebook suitable for windows XP or vista businees or botth?

EDITOR'S NOTE: There are two issues here... First, if you downgrade from Vista to XP, it will be "normal" just like any other XP system. Second, FreeDOS is yet another operating system. If you want FreeDOS and Vista, you'll need to create a second partition to install Vista and then use a dual boot setup.

Is there any solution yet for dealing with the Pavilion dv9700 disable SATA problem. The bios has no setting avaialble to do this.

I tried downgrading an acer 5120 from vista to xp but am getting an error message that "cannot recognize harddisk". Anyone with a solution to that.

EDITOR'S NOTE: It might be a SATA hard drive, for which you lack the drivers. Do a little googling along those lines...

hi
i have acer am5620 , came with windos vista home premium preinstalled. i called acer to downgrade it to XP. Customer service told me , it is not recommended and they wont help me to figure out the situation.
i do have original licence of windows xp cd. when i boot of the cd.. it start from cd and loading up. when get the message on blue screen (loading drivers) "Preparing to install windows" before i get any kind of options "enter" or F8 to agree on licence. i get blue screen with memory or some kind of error. however it vista is running fine of the system now.
plz help me to downgrade to xp .
i changed 2 hard drives .. suspecting some kind of lock on HD. but same answer

The Microsoft site says they want $59.00 for any support call -- so not as simple as calling the Microsoft Helpless Desk...

I just purchased a HP slimline. It came with Vista Home Premium. I booted with my XP disk, it reformats the hard drive, restarts, then reformats the hard drive again. It just keeps doing the same thing over and over. The computer has 2 hard drives, one has the Vista recovery on it. Help, please.

EDITOR'S NOTE: It seems that after XP formats and restarts, it's not seeing a formatted disk. I would try using a partitioning tool such as Partition Magic to delete the partition that Vista formerly occupied (the one you're trying to install into now) then recreate it and retry the XP install. When you say the computer has two hard drives, you're probably seeing one hard drive with two partitions, so be careful not to delete the Vista Recovery partition.

I want to go back from Vista to XP but when I insert the XP DVD into the drive and reboot my PC, I dont get any options to reboot from the disk, I checked the BIOS and it is already set to boot from the CD/DVD unit but I have no clue on why it's not doing it. And when I go to the disk directly, I get the usual XP installation screen but the option to install XP is blocked, I only get other options like check compatibility and stuff. I'm looking forward to get rid of Vista, I don't care if I have to format, but how do I go about it given this inconvenience that the XP DVD wont boot?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's a link that may help: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31932512/win-xp-cd-wont-boot.aspx

How do I find out which drivers are on my XP disk?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Drivers for what?