Is it possible to revert to XP from Win 7

Hammyman

prowla wrote: »

The laptop may be powerful enough, but there may be compatibility issues.
I've got Windows 7 on a couple of machines and have had to use XP display drivers.
And TBH, unless you get the Aero display effect (transparency), you get a rather naff blue windows border that can't be changed.

However you've got a far more secure OS. Personally I'd rather have that than worry about not having a pretty GUI effect.

fireice

I think that the laptops probably fine, but some older laptops just have problems with drivers on windows 7.

I've got a dell laptop, a little over 3 years old but I found install windows 7 a real headache, since dell decided not to supply windows 7 drivers for it i'm using a combination of windows 7 and vista drivers and a combination of some coming from dell and some directly from the manufacturers website

I can see how someone less knowledgeable than me on tech would be having problem because I found it quite to get everything working well

aliEnRIK

free4440273 wrote: »

you will have to reformat and then install clean xp/ depending on win 7 version you can use xp mode for compatibility issues //
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leanneloves (07-01-2011)

free4440273 wrote: »

http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

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leanneloves (07-01-2011)

leanneloves wrote: »

You can but a wipe and new install of XP is needed.

You can but a wipe and new install of XP is needed.

googler

Freebyman wrote: »

Hi, I have a friend who I helped out and installed windows 7 on her laptop last year. ......

Are there any suggestions?

Install a new, clean hard drive in the laptop, install XP on that, and put the Win 7 disk in a USB caddy and use it as a backup/storage drive?

Hammyman

fireice wrote: »

I think that the laptops probably fine, but some older laptops just have problems with drivers on windows 7.

I've got a dell laptop, a little over 3 years old but I found install windows 7 a real headache, since dell decided not to supply windows 7 drivers for it i'm using a combination of windows 7 and vista drivers and a combination of some coming from dell and some directly from the manufacturers website

I can see how someone less knowledgeable than me on tech would be having problem because I found it quite to get everything working well

But thats due to your lack of knowledge. If I couldn't get Windows 7 drivers from the manufacturer (assuming it hasn't got them already) I would just go to the chipset manufacturer and get them from there, i.e Broadcom if it was a Broadcam wireless card.

Freebyman

Well I ended up installing Win 7 again after using dban (thanks for the link) it all looked ok, but for some reason XP wouldnt recognise that the PC had a hard drive. Unfortunately the budget wouldnt run to a new one so Win 7 it had to be again. Thanks for all of your help.

CoolHotCold

Regards to XP not seeing the hard drive, you should of checked the BIOS first and changed the SATA controller to legacy mode or IDE mode.

Freebyman

Didnt think of that, I checked to see if it was booting from the hard drive but didnt do that.

DatabaseError

Freebyman wrote: »

Well I ended up installing Win 7 again after using dban (thanks for the link) it all looked ok, but for some reason XP wouldnt recognise that the PC had a hard drive. Unfortunately the budget wouldnt run to a new one so Win 7 it had to be again. Thanks for all of your help.

XP is old....very old...., and it doesn't recognise SATA drives "out of the box", so needs a driver disk to see them (part of teh installation routine asks for a 3rd party driver to be installed)

jaydeeuk1

Is it XP with SP2? My version certainly works out the box - and afaik, it was certain AMD controllers it had probs with. Also, if it a Flash based drive, you'll need at least SP1 to be able to install - the old version of XP won't recognise as a drive as I found on my old eee pc.