Warning: Uninstalling Vista

Overheal

Fabio wrote: »

Maybe formatting the whole computer may be your best bet and then reinstalling Vista or another OS.

This advice is especially for laptops.

Do not attempt to uninstall Vista without contacting your hardware and OEM manufacturers!

Some newer pieces of hardware and laptops ( for example, the new Geforce 8 series of Mobile GPUs ) may not have driver packs which will run under windows XP or older. Mobile Card Drivers are modified by your OEM (Dell, HP, Acer) before they are published for your machine - because the same card will vary between distributor to match that laptop's model. For example, I cannot go to nvidia.com and get drivers for my laptop - I have to wait for HP to publish their own modified version of the pack. Its a laptop thing.

Depending on your manufacturer(s) the driver packs they provide may not work under windows XP, as some OEMs have moved their support staff onto Vista. HP for example has not provided XP drivers for 60% of the hardware in my machine. Hence, installing XP is not advisable (and voids my warranty). An OS dual-boot also voids my warranty. Please check with your manufacturer's warranty if a dual boot will void your systems warranty.

As far as I know Dell machines still support XP; HP does not; and I cant comment on the other brand names.

If you require to XP to run certain programs you can run VirtualPC to do so.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

This has been provided for your information. Please sticky.

aidan_walsh

Better suited to the Windows forum, IMO.

Overheal

quite right.

Voodu Child

You would probably need to verify your information (ie provide sources) before requesting it to be stickied; HP provide instructions on how to do a dual XP/Vista boot on their website, and I have seen information from a HP spokesperson that refutes your claim that a dual-boot voids your HP warranty.

HP is committed to supporting its customers and backs its PCs with a solid hardware warranty regardless of the operating system.

In any case, i'd have thought it common sense to make sure you have available drivers before attempting any alternate OS install, so I doubt this qualifies for a sticky.

Capt'n Midnight

This issue won't affect most people here because the Vista Home license doesn't allow you to use XP. Only the Business license allows that and business users have a better chance of returning it.
The number of transferable XP licenses is very low.

Not supporting XP means something different to voiding warranty :rolleyes:
That's why most manufacturers have diags disks so they can check the HW no matter what sw you have. Supporting software is a nightmare. You can buy a laptop with windows on it for less than the retail cost of a copy of Vista premium. The laptop manufacturer will fix the hardware, and generally help you reinstall windows to factory ship config.

I have no problem with HP and Sony not supporting XP, people will just learn to avoid doing business with them. And by that I include the business users who buy Vista for the license and use XP for now. Is only the home user models affected ?

Buyer beware, check the manufacturers website before you buy if you want use a different OS.

There are a couple of suppliers who cold call regularly , I'll be reminding them about their poor legacy support and how difficulty it would be for me consider them ever again. ( others are being told about their poor Vista support )


OP - Microsoft shipped a program called rollback.exe with NT4 that undid a windows upgrade. They put it on the OEM CD , click on it and windows was toast.

I don't think that installing a third party OS will void the warranty. The OEM doesn't warrant software faults anyway - they'll normally just suggest you reset back to defaults using a restore image or else do a reformat. I work for Marx Computers and I know we don't consider a warranty void if the OS is changed. (I'm not advertising - better to disclose my occupation than appear as a shill)

It did happen once in a PC World store in London where someone who put Gentoo on a laptop had a warranty repair refused (broken hinge), but this was store policy rather than OEM policy. I don't know what happened with it in the end.