Going from Vista to XP

Poppycat

I hate Vista took it off my dell laptop and put xp back on result, laptop runs so much better, battery lasts much more due to less cpu cycles.

If Vista is the future God help us.

To get XP on my laptop I went to dell to get the drivers for the laptop for XP. Then I inserted XP in driver booted from CDrom (in bios) and format the rubbish off and installed XP. Installed the drivers from Dell which I shoved on a USB pen drive and pc last about 45 mins more than with Vista

Vista is not doing as well as MS envisaged. A friend who works in the trade supplying PC mainly to buisness told me that no one wants Vista

Even Dell now supply some laptops with XP again They will come a time when it will be forced on us, until that day I wont touch Vista again.

timestar

It is easy to get a new PC with XP - Dell offer a small range with it and several on-line PC retailers also do. Vista does have big problems - but a lot are caused by manufacturers selling under powered PCs bundled with Vista. I work at a university and it is still refusing to upgrade to Vista. MS want them to sign a very restrictive and expensive contract to move to Vista.

mrging

digp wrote: »

Has anyone managed to successfully do this. THe PC I bought comes with Visa which is just awful. I've managed to install XP. But half the stuff doesn;t work, e.g. ethernet, sound card etc.

When you purchased the PC you should of informed the company taht you didnt want Vista on it they would of knocked some money off the price.

If you know the make and model of the sound card etc you can try and download the drivers yourself for them at www.driverguide.com

isofa

Most good independent PC suppliers still offer XP as a choice, as do Dell, if they aren't listed on the Home section, login to small business or telephone and specify.

If you have the full specification of the machine, i.e. make and model of video card, sound card, Ethernet etc. You should be able to go to the manufacturers websites directly and download compatible XP drivers for the devices... That will save you reinstalling the system as you purchased it just to find out what's in it!

Much better to go to the manufacturers sites directly, rather than use driverguide which can be out of date, and sometimes inaccurate.

Millionaire

I ended up buying a Mac after I got fed up with Vista. So far so good.

sco0ter

epz wrote: »

re the ops point i think the vista license is backwards compatible so you can legally download, i would advise backing up anything on it, getting copies of the drivers, and a clean install.

You only have XP downgrade rights if its VISTA ULTIMATE OR Business. Downloading is not legal in any way and a legal XP disk is still required (MS will sell you a cheap one). You then have to install XP then call MS and quote an UNACTIVATED vista key in order to get your legal XP key

d123

mrging wrote: »

When you purchased the PC you should of informed the company taht you didnt want Vista on it they would of knocked some money off the price.

If you know the make and model of the sound card etc you can try and download the drivers yourself for them at www.driverguide.com

At the moment, if you try and buy and buy a PC without Vista, there is a surcharge for XP.

With regards to the drivers, why go to driverguide?
The manufacturers support website is a far safer and reliable way to get all the drivers you need.

BritBrat

You need XP drivers.

And you may need to look at BIOS changes.

At the moment, if you try and buy and buy a PC without Vista, there is a surcharge for XP.

Not true in my case, bought a laptop for OH with VISTA home basic installed, phoned up HP and got sent for free a XP pro OEM disk.

Blacksheep1979

BritBrat wrote: »

And you may need to look at BIOS changes.

erm why? BIOS deals with the hardware and not the OS

sco0ter

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

erm why? BIOS deals with the hardware and not the OS

Not true I needed a bios upgrade to use my free VISTA upgrade with my acer as it would have to activate it everytime I logged on. In the end up microsoft sent me a retail version instead as Acer have no plans to upgrade my bios as my laptop is not meant to have qualified for the free upgrade. Something to do with an SLIC table or something