How to downgrade from Vista to XP pro

ian.f

Can anyone here tell me how to install xp pro on my vista laptop.

Do I need to buy a specific version because some that I have been looking at say must be installed clean which I don't think I know how to do.

Thanks

SeanW

Yes, it must be installed clean AFAIK. Back up your data and prepare to reformat the Hard Drive. You might get away with simply installing Windows XP on top of Vista and superceeding it, but it would be messy and you ideally shouldn't do it.

In any case, you will not be able to perform the WinXP installation as an upgrade, so for that reason you might want to consider buying an OEM version of that OS and saving a chunk of money.

When someone says installing Windows "clean" what they mean is doing a new installation either on a newly-reformatted hard drive, or otherwise performing an installation ignoring whatever might be on the hard drive beforehand. This is opposed to an "Upgrade" where the installation attempts migrate your existing settings and files from a previous version to the new one. i.e. if you were upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional, you would use an Upgrade installation to get your desktop files/installed programs/registry/drivers/etc. to be the same, in as much as possible under the new operating system as they were under the old.

But that process is not backward compatible.

Installing Windows XP is actually rather simple - just pop in the CD before you turn on the lappy and follow the instructions on the resulting setup program. The only problem you might have is the AHCI protocol for newer machines that use Serial ATA hard drives, in that case, you may need to change some settings in the BIOS (to set the SATA channels back to IDE) or use a floppy disc containing drivers. Vista is the first Microsoft OS to support the AHCI protcol natively, so hopefully the maker of your laptop made some provisions for backward compatibility.

PogMoThoin

Check the laptop manufacturers website for Xp drivers as unless there's drivers no point even trying. Alot of laptops have no Xp drivers and are stuck with Vista. Whats the make & model of the laptop?

My brother and myself downgraded his Acer laptop, an Aspire 5720. Acer had no drivers for it so I had to make do with whatever I could get.

The graphics, sound and wired LAN were simple, just downloaded the packages from Intel, Realtek and Broadcom respectively. The wireless LAN drivers weren't available from the manufacturer (Atheros) but there is an unofficial site offering Atheros drivers. The modem was more complicated, I had to download a driver for a different laptop and force install it because the ID in the INF didn't match (though it still worked). We decided against running the SATA controller in IDE mode (the laptop's poor enough as it is) so we used a USB floppy to install the Intel ICH8M AHCI driver. It's working away fine, far better than Vista was.

Basically, make a note of all the devices in the machine before you remove Vista, including their PCI IDs if you can. It is doable, don't expect it to be 100% smooth but you will get there.

PogMoThoin

Karsini wrote: »

My brother and myself downgraded his Acer laptop, an Aspire 5720. Acer had no drivers for it so I had to make do with whatever I could get.

The graphics, sound and wired LAN were simple, just downloaded the packages from Intel, Realtek and Broadcom respectively. The wireless LAN drivers weren't available from the manufacturer (Atheros) but there is an unofficial site offering Atheros drivers. The modem was more complicated, I had to download a driver for a different laptop and force install it because the ID in the INF didn't match (though it still worked). We decided against running the SATA controller in IDE mode (the laptop's poor enough as it is) so we used a USB floppy to install the Intel ICH8M AHCI driver. It's working away fine, far better than Vista was.

Basically, make a note of all the devices in the machine before you remove Vista, including their PCI IDs if you can. It is doable, don't expect it to be 100% smooth but you will get there.

:rolleyes: What you do for the chipset driver? The Daddy of them all. It may seem like it is running fine, but you are probably losing performance and stability in some areas.

Chipset drivers should ALWAYS be installed as the first thing after a fresh install of windows. Here

Capt'n Midnight

you are allowed to downgrade vista business to xp PRO

you can't downgrade vista home or "premium" to xp pro as the license doesn't allow it and you would have to purchase a non-OEM XP license (or a non-OEM vista business one)

the downgrade only applies to licensing , microsoft won't support the older OS and you have to source your own media etc.

check manu site for xp drivers, or if you have a sony , well you'll figure it out
check the hdd mode if you have flash cache or similar

then it's wipe and install , make 110% sure you have vista recovery DVD's made first, IIRC with HP you have to make them in the first 90 days

or if you purchased a seperate licenses , only then are you allowed a dual boot
you would need to make space for xp and when xp installs it buggers up vista so you have to repair vista afterwards

PogMoThoin

PogMoThoin wrote: »

:rolleyes: What you do for the chipset driver? The Daddy of them all. It may seem like it is running fine, but you are probably losing performance and stability in some areas.

Chipset drivers should ALWAYS be installed as the first thing after a fresh install of windows. Here

I used the package from Intel, it was an Intel 945, I just forgot to mention it.

Actually, while that would have been true in the past, chipset drivers are nowhere near as important as they used to be. PCI Express doesn't require a GART miniport like AGP does so graphics cards will still run at full performance even without chipset software. All they really do nowadays is show the correct name in the Device Manager rather than "PCI standard host CPU bridge" for example.

NVIDIA don't use chipset drivers in the same way as Intel do, they come with a LAN driver and one INF to clear an unknown device (the SMBus controller) - chances are if Windows had a generic SMBus INF they wouldn't include that either. My nForce machine has tons of generic devices - standard USB controllers, standard PCI bridges, standard IDE controllers, it looks sloppy. While they do include an IDE driver it's terrible and isn't worth installing anyway.

pendude

actually its scary how many people want to downgrade!
i`ve seen this question in forums tonns of times now!
is it the OS or the computers then?

It's a bit of both. Vista is extremely heavy and there's still computers and laptops on the market that really aren't up to running it. Especially if it came with Vista Home Basic, that's a pretty good sign that it's not able to handle Vista proper.

Even then I have a pretty good machine, a Core 2 Duo E6420 with 4GB of RAM and I still find XP to be more responsive than Vista on the same hardware. Though you could argue that the RAM is going to waste considering XP is only using 284MB as I write this.

Overheal

pendude wrote: »

actually its scary how many people want to downgrade!
i`ve seen this question in forums tonns of times now!
is it the OS or the computers then?

there was some report the other week i read that said about 35% of computers are predicted to have been downgraded from Vista to XP

http://gizmodo.com/5038772/over-one-third-of-vista-machines-have-been-downgraded-to-xp

I'd bet anything its all down to frustration with the UAC. Because once you disable/get-over that, Vista is actually great imo.

kaizersoze

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you are allowed to downgrade vista business to xp PRO

you can't downgrade vista home or "premium" to xp pro as the license doesn't allow it and you would have to purchase a non-OEM XP license (or a non-OEM vista business one)

the downgrade only applies to licensing , microsoft won't support the older OS and you have to source your own media etc.

check manu site for xp drivers, or if you have a sony , well you'll figure it out
check the hdd mode if you have flash cache or similar

then it's wipe and install , make 110% sure you have vista recovery DVD's made first, IIRC with HP you have to make them in the first 90 days

or if you purchased a seperate licenses , only then are you allowed a dual boot
you would need to make space for xp and when xp installs it buggers up vista so you have to repair vista afterwards

+1
All true

Personally I can't see why people bother.
Any problem usually stems from people either unwilling to learn or buying cheap low spec pc's from the like of Tesco or Dell and expect it to be a flyer.

I've seen these for sale or come into the workshop with specs that would struggle with XP, never mind Vista.

PogMoThoin

I'm actually lovin Vista, but I've got the pc power to run it. Its a much better operating System than Xp in many ways. I've UAC turned off of course and have loads of startup items disabled and removed all the bloat that I don't need. I've Xp on another dual core pc downstairs but Vista is what I'm using most. Not noticing it any slower than Xp after service pack 1 in fact its faster. Pre-fetch is a great, firefox and my usual programs open really snappy, much quicker than on Xp.

hbr

pendude wrote: »

actually its scary how many people want to downgrade!
i`ve seen this question in forums tonns of times now!
is it the OS or the computers then?

I have just removed Vista from my laptop. Instead of downgrading,
I upgraded it to Linux.

yoyo

pendude wrote: »

actually its scary how many people want to downgrade!
i`ve seen this question in forums tonns of times now!
is it the OS or the computers then?

It was the same when XP came out, in fact XP was far worse as it had massive security problems and stability ones, XP was only really properly "fixed" with SP2, Vista imo is a vast improvement compared to when xp was when it launched in 01,

Nick