Getting rid of Vista and installing XP

mikem1986

Ive put in the CD and the install xp button is greyed out and unclickable...
Ive tried doing this in safe mode too and same thing
Ive also tried booting from the CD first using the BIOS and it doesnt work, loads Vista anyway...

Ive looked around on the web and have been told to format the drives and delete any partitions which i have done. I now only have C:/ but when i go to format it says "cannot format as this is the drive with the operating system on" or something to that effect...

Its really starting to annoy me now, all i want is to put XP back on my laptop!

[Deleted User]

Make sure your CD/DVD Drive is set as the first device in the BIOS boot order, then restart with the XP disc in the drive and follow the on screen instructions to format the hard drive and then install XP.

Make sure you've backed everything you need though

mikem1986

Hi Anew

That doesnt work, ive put the CD Drive first and the hard disk last on boot and it just skips the CD and just loads Vista anyway

[Deleted User]

Do you get prompted to press any key to boot from the CD?

mikem1986

no nothing

just loads up vista as normal

superscaper

Why put the hard drive in the boot sequence at all?

aliEnRIK

Im unsure why your having problems there!
Typically the bios settings should be set to boot the cd/dvd player BEFORE the hard drive.
Have the cd in ready and boot up. It SHOULD then boot the cd first and ask you to 'press any key' to boot up the cd. It goes through some menus and eventually you should have the option of doing a full or quick format (Do the full to be absolutely sure)
If not then im guessing that the xp disc you have is faulty in some way!

dcag36

is your xp disc original if not it may not be a bootable cd if its an original cd then its faulty or dirty try cleaning then try again

mikem1986

the cd is perfect because when vista loads its in the / drive in my computer

it does go into the cd, i changed it to load from CD first, so when i turn ther laptop on it the disc starts spinning in the drive, then stops then vista loads up

then when i go into my computer and click setup on the disc the "install xp" button is greyed out

(it is an original xp disc)(

aliEnRIK

Like superscraper said
Take the hard drive COMPLETELY out of the boot sequence and see what happens

Conor_3

Why bother installing an EOL product?