Vista --> XP Downgrade

Joined: 07 Jul 2005 Posts: 251

My girlfriend just bought a new laptop that has Windows Vista on it. POS! We would like to downgrade to Windows XP Pro, for which we already have the disc, but its telling us it cant find the hard drive. So, I went to the Gateway site, downloaded the latest drivers, tried again and get the same error message. So aside from buying a new hard drive, how do I get XP on and Vista off?

-Mike

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 2:39 pm

i beleive you need to do a format of the boot sector, Vista screws with the MBR and you cant get it off unless its formatted, try throwing an ubuntu live CD in there and formatting the entire drive.

Does attempting to doa clean install not work...by booting to the XP CD?

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 3708

yea wipe the HDD clean before throwing xp on it

Joined: 07 Jul 2005 Posts: 251

everytime I try to load the software to reformat the drive (i.e., using the XP Pro cd), it tells me it cant find the hard drive. So I was told by a local shop that I need to load the drivers off a floppy, but the drivers are 18mb! I was also told that if I take the drive out, and reformat it on my desktop (I have sata connections) that it would erase the drive but I would have the same problem because XP dont recognize SATA drives. But yet, it did when I did a reformat on my desktop.

What am I missing fellas?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:34 pm

mike, when you throw the XP cd in and boot, how far does it get, does it get to a point where you can choose to delete/create new a partition? if so, you need to do that, but it doesnt sound like your getting that far. i might try grabbing the Ubuntu live cd and giving it a go on the format that route.

Joined: 07 Jul 2005 Posts: 251

the most I get to is right after it installs the drivers it needs for the install, it tells me to hit enter to continue, F3 to quit, or R to repair a previous installation. So I hit enter, and the screen comes up saying it cant find the hard drive. My question is, if I reformat the drive 100% by removing the hdd and using my desktop to reformat it, will it recognize the hdd in the laptop once I put it back in, or do I need the drivers? If you can give me some more info on this Ubuntu software, it would be greatly appreciated.

I appreciate all the help you guys are giving me!

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:03 am

well, i dont know how you would put the laptop drive in your SATA PC to format it. They are different form fators to my knowledge. If you can format the disk with a boot floppy from an online source, that should do it too. Ubuntu download is here, 700 Mb ISO to make a Cd image, when you boot the CD it will run the os, and you can choose to format the drive. might want to try loading ubuntu if you get that far. i dont use it much, but in the limited use i have its a great alternative to XP.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 3708

you need to format the drive, you cannot just pop the cd in and format that way. do it from command line