[KarenSeb]

Ack! I've read this thread intently only to find it dropping off w/o the instruction on how to format a HD with Vista installed. I'm sorry Rgreen but unlike you I have not become accustomed to Vista - Bleech! And I want it removed permanently.:evil: I have a legit copy of XP and want to install that on my newly formatted, erased forever Vista HD :) I have owned all copies of Windows from 3.1 to Vista. Vista has got to be second worst only to ME. '98 was the best with 2000 following close behind IMHO ;) Thanks,Karen............

[mphenterprises]

Hi Karen. Please do not latch onto another person's thread. Your issue may not get the attention that it deserves if it is buried on someone else's thread. I have created a new thread for you.Now, that being said, RGreen has made a very good and thorough tutorial for members who want to do exactly what you need:http://forums.pcworld.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=53015#53015

[rgreen4]

If you boot from the XP install disc, it should format the drive.I actually was going to try the full process to give a blow by blow description, but my XP install disc is circa 2002 and the machine I have Vista on has the ICH8 SATA drive and Raid controller, and when XP went to install, after copying the files, it blue screened.That is one thing you will need to be careful of, when starting the install process of XP, you will get a message about loading third party drivers, and if you have an older version of XP you may need the SATA drivers. As I said in the full Thread formatting or writting over the original Vista HD is burning a bridge. Hopefully, you won't burn the last bridge and have created the recovery DVD's before you started this process. As much as you feel you don't like Vista, someday you might want to be able to restore the machine. You would be even more displeased to have to pay several hundred dollars to buy an OS you already had for free.If the XP disc won't format the Vista disc (MS sometimes doesn't like us messing with Daddy Bill :twisted: ), then download the drive diagnostics software for your drive. For example most of my drives are Seagate, so I have Seatools. Ironically none work within Vista as it has expanded and enhanced Disc Manager. You will have to set up to boot from the CD or Floppy whichever bootable device you have.Another option, is to use a new drive, install XP and then if you are really determined to do away with Vista, format the drive from within XP and use it for data only or clone a spare OS drive. I would recommend data, as I never recommend keeping Data with the OS. That way when reinstalling the OS, you just do it, your data is not at risk.

[KarenSeb]

Thank you kindly Mr. Moderator Sir and you as well RGreen.Accept my apology from the most recent Newbie of this forum :)

[mphenterprises]

LOL :wink: No apologizes necessary. :-) Welcome to the forum.

[drcarlos7]

KarenYou're right about Vista being bleech...it's garbage. You would think that MS (Microsoft) would get their act together after all 26 of these years of windows and make an OS that had reliable new and OLD features. But alas, they don't. They don't even adequately support their own basic hardware such as keyboards and mice in Vista Home Premium and told few people that their XP backups would be useless in vista unless they bought the Business or Ultimate versions. What a farce. They're a bunch of marketing frauds with a large legal dept. to guard them from lawsuits and a small programming dept. that is vetoed regularly by the marketing dept. MS is a fraud and so they're being sued in court over misrepresentation of Vista certification. I hope they lose so some people can get their money back that MS has been sitting on with their mountain of cash (2.2 billion). Anyway, I'm done bloviating. Go back to XP SP2 and wait for SP3 to come out later this month. If you can. You'll have fewer hardware headaches, fewer alerts about hardware updates and drivers, etc. Vista is the end of the line for Microsoft OS's. I'm out today to buy a Mac...Apple, Apple, here I come!!

[piyushsingh]

many of my friends have removed vista OEM fron their new systems and gone back to XP, but i m still in doubt what to keep on my new PC or a dual boot of vista and XP.dual boot has some headaches as u have to install utilities twice for both OS.But XP cant carry on for long , maybe vista SP1 will give something to cheer about.

[mphenterprises]

Okay, I'm just being proactive here but before this thread becomes Anti-Vista or Pro-XP, let's try and focus on the original poster's concern of how to remove Vista and install XP. There are plenty of other threads were one can voice his or her opinions regarding Vista. :)

[piyushsingh]

ok. removing vista and installing xp doesnt seem trouble to me , although i havent done it.u can format vista drive with a XP CDI dont think xp will install over vista on the same drive, install to a new partition and del vista one.If i m wrong somebody plz correct me. but it shud do.

[rgreen4]

piyushsingh - IT'S NOT. Installing any OS, is not that simple. This was one of the reasons (among others) that manufacturers started imaging HD's and doing restore DVD's so you could just pop it in and it would make all nice like it came from the factory.The stumbling block - drivers. Take a 2006 era MB with the ICH8 hard drive controller or a 2007 era MB with the ICH9 hard drive controller and attempt to install XP. Unless is XP SP2a or later, I guarantee it will blue screen when it tries to load. I got a blue screen when trying to install XP SP1 on a machine that came with XP MCE SP2a. XP drivers will not work in Vista and Vista drivers will not work in XP. Those who bought a late 2006 XP machine and got the free Vista Upgrade got two discs, one for the OS and one for all the drivers. And never install an upgrade on top of an existing OS, always do a clean install, preferably on a newly formatted HD. Then if you have problems you can go back. It's not wise to burn your bridges behind you.The biggest headache to installing XP on a Vista machine is identifying, downloading and installing all the drivers. Some you can't even get XP to go out and find, for rather than identifying the specific item Windows will drop back to its Generic drivers. If it were so simple, we wouldn't have all these postings. Unfortunately, its almost as hard to install Vista on the older machines for the same reason.Many of the problems with OEM installed Vista are not Vista related, but related to the blotware that is installed on them. The thing is that XP has the exact same problems with the same bloatware, just read the postings. As for the lawsuit with the stickers, Microsoft never put the first sticker on a PC, never have, never will. If it's an HP machine, Hp put on all the stickers. If it's a Sony, Sony put on all the stickers, and decides which one to put on which machine. How many of the people who complained took the time and effort to download and run the free Vista prep program that told you what your machine needed for Vista?My signature line gives my optinion. I have been running Vista for over 3 months. I have only had one problem, and that was when I downloaded a new video driver, and when I went to install it, I double clicked on the XP version and installed it. I restored the machine that evening and separated XP drivers from Vista drivers by folders. (The drivers are on a network drive and I keep the XP versions for experiments with the XP OS HD I slip in when there is a forum question on XP MCE).XP if treated properly is a very stable OS (my XP Pro installation is 4 1/2 years old) and Vista is the same way. One of the best performance and reliability enhancements anyone can do to their machine is to get rid of the "Internet Security" suites. A layered approch of stand alone anti-virus, several anti-spyware and root-kit revealers works better and slows the machine down less.

[piyushsingh]

thanx for the info rgreen. u probably saved me from a future mess.

[rgreen4]

I sometimes may get a little excited when I see someone heading for a cliff. I have made all those mistakes in the past, like formatting a HD only to remember the irreplacable file that was not backed up. As smax and I like to say, we have the T-shirt and coffee mug collections, and are not eager to add to them, but are eager to help others from falling into the abyss.I clone drives for the same reason. The morning I got in a hurry to install the wrong driver and got a black screen, I simply turned off the PC, swapped the SATA signal cable and power cable from drive A to B, turned on the machine and was back in business. I recloned that evening and took the master out of the machine. I have also been known to run a machine with the drive sitting on the carpet with the cables coming out the open side of the machine (not long term though).Most people keep spare keys to their house and car, but not the computer? I have a spare drive for every machine, with a clone of the current operating drive. With the price of drives today, how can we not justify $50 for a spare drive for a $1,500 computer, and $30 for the program to do the cloning? You do have to keep the drives separate though. A drive cloned from System A, will not work in System B, even if the specs are identical, because the CPU serial no and MB serial no are not and they are part of the installation.And besides, reinstalling Windows of any stripe, with all the associated software we have added, and then redoing all the setting - Major Pain :twisted:

[KarenSeb]

Thank you for the welcome Mr. Moderator :)DrCarlos - I couldn't agree with you more ;) As a matter of fact, I contemplated getting an Apple before I bought my Dell. I gave Vista the benefit of the doubt tho and had hoped that MS had finally straightened out their act and supplied consumers with a workable OS. I have never been so frustrated and disappointed in my life in regards to MS! :x UGH! My two sense.....Anyway.... Rgreen - your wealth of information is invaluable, thank you. You are going to say "I told you so tho...." I tried installing XP and now I'm getting the Blue Screen 'o' Death revealing to me that I have a corrupt hard drive. I am thinking however, that it is not corrupt, it's just that I don't have the SATA drivers - Eek!. I have no floppy drive either. I can install the drivers, hitting F6, when prompted, from a USB port? Keep in mind that this was all done before I read your instruction, so don't be too hard on me :wink:

[avanish11]

when you say usb port, do you mean a usb flash drive? If you do, then it will NOT work. trust me I've tried it. CDs don't work either. The only 2 ways to get it to work is to Removed by Moderator or to get an external floppy, and hope you can find the drivers.Edited by MPHEnterprises - Please do not discuss anything regarding hacks or cracks

[KarenSeb]

Yep that's what I meant - a flash drive. I did try the CD but like you said that didn't work. What is "Removed by Moderator"? lol..... Is that something that is illegal? Grrrrrrrrrrr..... I wish they just would've left the format command alone :(

[mphenterprises]

Hi Karen. That is someting I did. We encourage everyone to help out as much as possible. However, if there is anything that could potentially violate the Community Standards, that portion of the post will be edited.Never feel like you have to watch what you post. Just be aware of what is allowed. :-) Click on the link in the above paragraph to learn more about the Community Standards.

[avanish11]

heh oops. I guess I should've read the rules first :oops:

[rgreen4]

KarenSeb - did you try to install XP on top of the Vista installation? If so how far did you get. When I ran into problems with XP SP1, my Vista installation was unaffected, as when it installs it first copies files to memory and then starts to write to the HD, thats when mine craterd (I do experiment around, so this was not my operating disc, but most people don't have this option).Does the machine boot in Vista?Do you have the recovery DVD's?avanish11 - when it asks if you have third party drivers to hit F6 it does not appear to do anything, but immediately after XP copies all the files to memory, it stops and then asks you to install a CD with the drivers, and then and only then starts to copy to the HD. If you hit enter or try to use the wrong CD, it Blue Screens, and then on restart boots back onto the unaffected HD. (That has been my experience twice, I have not downloaded the XCH8 drivers, for the situation I was doing the experiment for became moot. Maybe this weekend I'll have time to do another experiment).When I posted my thread, I assumed that people would be going out and purchasing new XP SP2a or SP2b discs, not using one from 2-3 years back. We need to remember that 3 years in computers is a generation. My 9 month old HP Media Center has had its replacement replaced. (The m7690y was replaced by the m8000y which in turn was replaced by the m8100y).

[avanish11]

[quote:d2323f9e7c]avanish11 - when it asks if you have third party drivers to hit F6 it does not appear to do anything, but immediately after XP copies all the files to memory, it stops and then asks you to install a CD with the drivers, and then and only then starts to copy to the HD. If you hit enter or try to use the wrong CD, it Blue Screens, and then on restart boots back onto the unaffected HD. (That has been my experience twice, I have not downloaded the XCH8 drivers, for the situation I was doing the experiment for became moot. Maybe this weekend I'll have time to do another experiment).When I posted my thread, I assumed that people would be going out and purchasing new XP SP2a or SP2b discs, not using one from 2-3 years back. We need to remember that 3 years in computers is a generation. My 9 month old HP Media Center has had its replacement replaced. (The m7690y was replaced by the m8000y which in turn was replaced by the m8100y).[/quote:d2323f9e7c]Yeah I know. I got it to work after about 6 days of messing around. Thanks though. and I used the original 2002 version copy of xp. It works fine if you can find the right drivers.[/quote]

[mphenterprises]

Not a problem at all, avanish11, we live and we learn. :-) Karen, you are in very good hands right now. One way or another, you will have you system up and running very shortly.