downgrading toshiba tecra A9 to XP

[Deleted User]

I have a Toshiba tecra laptop A9 series. It came with Vista business but came with an XP downgrade CD. I do not like vista much and want to downgrade to XP. Some people have told me that this may be difficult or screw up my computer as the drivers are different. I am no computer expert and don't want to downgrade if its all very involved or will mess my laptop up. Has anyone downgraded their toshiba with the downgrade disk provided? Was it straight forward?

davb

I'm not sure about the Toshiba, but I would think a Vista to XP downgrade would be a clean install - complete reformat and install.
You will need to back up all of your data, and you should also have an XP licence key with the downgrade, as the Vista key won't work.

[Deleted User]

davb wrote: »

I'm not sure about the Toshiba, but I would think a Vista to XP downgrade would be a clean install - complete reformat and install.
You will need to back up all of your data, and you should also have an XP licence key with the downgrade, as the Vista key won't work.

The downgrade CD does not have a key on it or on the envelope it comes in. Hmm may not be able to downgrade after all.

davb

drinkupretty wrote: »

The downgrade CD does not have a key on it or on the envelope it comes in. Hmm may not be able to downgrade after all.

It 'could' be like Dell, who use OEM pre-activation. The install checks the BIOS to make sure it's a Dell, and if it is, it doesn't need a key.
I would check carefully first though.

The other (cost) option is to upgrade to Windows 7.

[Deleted User]

davb wrote: »

It 'could' be like Dell, who use OEM pre-activation. The install checks the BIOS to make sure it's a Dell, and if it is, it doesn't need a key.
I would check carefully first though.

The other (cost) option is to upgrade to Windows 7.

Cheers for the info

[Deleted User]

All done, very simple process. So far so good