Help.. need to reformat vista to xp...

[Xmenfreak2]

Hi bros, I am trying to downgrade windows vista to xp but not able to reformat it.. any kind souls to guide me to this? plsss.. thanks..

[Zniper]

bro, u need a bootable xp cd to do tis... it's the simplest way to do so... u cant juz right click c: and click on the format...

[Reuters]

what version of vista are you using? did u check if your laptop/PC is downgradeable to XP?

[Soleution]

Your hdd is on SATA, XP do not have driver for SATA so cannot format, you need to get the SATA driver for your HDD.

[Happily1986]

Vista is more resource hungry than XP so whatever that is certified Vista compliant will certainly work on XP. Whether the machine will fly is another matter. You dont need third party SATA drivers during the installation of XP unless you are doing RAID. Then in which case you will have to install the third party drivers when Windows prompt you to do so. SATA and IDE drivers have native support in XP (be it 32bit or 64 bit).

 

Let me just throw in the simple steps here for you.

 

Insert your XP CD-ROM then restart the computer.

 

Upon rebooting, hit the F8 key till a menu comes up.

 

Select the CD-ROM drive. This will tell the computer to bootup using the bootup image in the XP CD-ROM.

 

Windows XP setup will prompt you that there is an pre-existing installation but it probably won't recognise it since it isn't XP.

 

Select the option to install on the partition containing the Vista OS. The idea is to get Windows to clean format and then install fresh.

 

I recommend you do a proper format rather than a quick format.

 

Follow the subsequent instructions on the screen.

[BoneStock]

Hi bros, I am trying to downgrade windows vista to xp but not able to reformat it.. any kind souls to guide me to this? plsss.. thanks..

 

One more consideration before you install XP is to make sure that all the hw drivers are available in XP. Especially for newer computers, the drivers for XP are not available anymore in the manufacturer's site. You might be able to download the drivers from the oem sites though.

Edited July 3, 2009 by BoneStock