Downgrading the OS?

Lucreazia

Lucreazia

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I bought a Gateway desktop a few months ago when my old desktop died. It came with Vista already installed. I like Vista and all but I really just prefer XP. Its to late to take it back so if I want XP I have to buy the install disk. Well anyway my question is how do I downgrade from Vista to XP. My friend says to do this you have to format the C drive to completly wipe Vista off and just put in am XP install disk and you will be fine.

I want to know if it is easy to do. I don't want to lose Vista and not be able to get it back.
 
Thanks for the response, it could be helpful. However, I don't really want to keep Vista unless I have to... I just want XP instead. The problem with that is: if XP messes up and doesn't install, I don't have the hardware to re-install Vista since it was pre-installed.

Would formatting the hard drive and attempting to install XP be a good idea or should I just stuck to the Dual Boot?
 
By installing XP, you'll be formatting Vista.

If it somehow does mess up (VERY unlikely), however, I'm sure Gateway would send you a Vista disc.
 
[quote name='Lucreazia']I bought a Gateway desktop a few months ago when my old desktop died. It came with Vista already installed. I like Vista and all but I really just prefer XP. Its to late to take it back so if I want XP I have to buy the install disk. Well anyway my question is how do I downgrade from Vista to XP. My friend says to do this you have to format the C drive to completly wipe Vista off and just put in am XP install disk and you will be fine.

I want to know if it is easy to do. I don't want to lose Vista and not be able to get it back.[/quote]

You can't downgrade your OS. The only way to put XP on there is to reformat. If you don't want to lose Vista, then there are a couple of ways this can be done depending on your circumstances.

1) did you get a Vista disk with your computer? If so, just buy a copy of XP and reformat, and you can just reinstall Vista any time you want to.

2) if not, then what more prebuilts are doing now is putting a recovery partition on your computer that you can restore the OS from. Just leave this partition in when you reformat with XP and you're be fine if you want to reload Vista at some point.


I'm guess you aren't overly experienced at this so one tip before you start. Make sure you download all the drivers you need for XP (video, audio, network, etc) before you reformat.
 
I did not get a Vista Recovery Disk when I bought the computer. I have a Cand D drive and the D is labeled Recovery so is that where the reccovery partition is?

Also how would I go about finding the Drivers for XP?
 
[quote name='Lucreazia']I did not get a Vista Recovery Disk when I bought the computer. I have a Cand D drive and the D is labeled Recovery so is that where the reccovery partition is?

Also how would I go about finding the Drivers for XP?[/QUOTE]


That's where your recovery partition is, so don't format that, and don't delete that partition.

You can start by looking at gateway's website for drivers, just browse your comptuer's model number to see if they also have XP drivers.
 
[quote name='SOSTrooper']That's where your recovery partition is, so don't format that, and don't delete that partition.

You can start by looking at gateway's website for drivers, just browse your comptuer's model number to see if they also have XP drivers.[/quote]


good advice. If that doesn't work, try looking up the companies that made the actually components.
 
make sure you get the drivers BEFORE you format. I had a similar problem and had a hella time finding the correct drivers for xp.
 
[quote name='SOSTrooper']That's where your recovery partition is, so don't format that, and don't delete that partition.

You can start by looking at gateway's website for drivers, just browse your comptuer's model number to see if they also have XP drivers.[/QUOTE]

This is true as far as the recovery partition. You may want to check under all programs as well though...because you may be able to create a set of backup discs from the exisiting recovery. I did it on my new compaq. These come in handy if the hard drive should fail.

I agree too you should definitely look and see if XP drivers are available. It will save you the hassle later.
 
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