[zoepaulpenny]

MY good friend has an laptop with vista OS . he hates vista, but he has his old XP installation CD, he wants to overwrite his current OS and install XP can he do this without any problems?? he does not want to fork out money for windows 7 OS . thanks for reply's.

[ashe17]

You can I have done this myself. You best make sure that you can find all the drivers needed wifi, graphics card and all that will work with xp. Also place them on a external memory stick, install them from that.

Edit: Do make sure you have a copy of a product key. Can sometimes go wrong and need to call ms to activate.

[albertd]

He had better make sure that he has everything possible backed up properly. Also, is there not a fair chance that he will need to reinstall every bit of software that he might have already added? Is he prepared to do that?

[zoepaulpenny]

I do not know all of the answers you have asked. BUT i will mention them to him, first thing in morning. but for now thanks for your answers.

[LION8TIGER]

So long as the XP CD was on that laptop already then it should be no problem.

Edit: backup all your files, photos etc as they will be wiped.

[Loobster]

Originally Posted by zoepaulpenny

MY good friend has an laptop with vista OS . he hates vista, but he has his old XP installation CD, he wants to overwrite his current OS and install XP can he do this without any problems?? he does not want to fork out money for windows 7 OS . thanks for reply's.

If the XP CD was from another computer then installing it to the Vista one will not result in a legitimate installation, if that's of concern to your friend.

If it's a retail edition, then as long as there are XP drivers available for that model, he should be ok.

[s2k]

You would be better off checking if the drivers are available before doing anything else. Go to the manufacturers website and check out the downloads, if they offer XP drivers for the laptop then your good to go if the XP CD is suitable. If they don't readily provide drivers, then its going to be a massive headache and not worth bothering unless you know what your doing.

As Loobster points out as well you cant just use any old Windows disk and expect it to activate and/or be a legit installation. The Home Premium and Basic versions do not give you downgrade rights to previous OSes so if the Vista version falls into this category then a seperate licence is needed.

[zoepaulpenny]

I see, so the laptop he wants to downgrade to XP was originally VISTA the XP OS disk is from another laptop which was installed with that OS.

so in a nut shell he has borrowed an XP cd and wishes to use it, on a vista OS laptop,
I do not know about his drivers being compatible , he is going to visit the website.

[ironjade]

Should he ever do this successfully he'll have an OS which is well past its sell by date and running out of road.
Tell him to open his wallet and get W7.

[albertd]

Originally Posted by ironjade

Tell him to open his wallet and get W7.

Or learn to live with Vista. I have had it for over 4 years and am not bothered about it now. It has its idiosyncrasies, but don't they all?

[ironjade]

Originally Posted by albertd

Or learn to live with Vista. I have had it for over 4 years and am not bothered about it now. It has its idiosyncrasies, but don't they all?

Also a good idea. I never had a problem with Vista and only replaced it when I decided to go with Linux Mint.
I keep W7 for the (very) rare occasion when I can't use Linux.

[Maxatoria]

as usual make/model of the offender is always useful, but if he can't legitimately downgrade and hates vista that much he could always go the linux route or cough up for a win 7 license

[JeffG1]

Vista to Windows 7 upgrade is £87 on Amazon. Christmas is not far away - maybe your friend can get donations!

I agree with ironjade - going backward is not a sensible thing to do. A bit like going back to a black and white TV from a colour CRT, rather than forking out for a flat screen LCD.

[R410]

I have done this, Vista to XP, the only problem is the old Gateway laptop I did it on (not the laptop I am currently on) was only sold with Vista on, so there aren't not drivers freely available for it.

So far I have got a compatible display driver to make the display function, a driver for the wireless and now I just have to get an audio driver.
I have got a purpose for this laptop when I get round to doing it, using it as a media PC.

[darkknight77]

Originally Posted by zoepaulpenny

MY good friend has an laptop with vista OS . he hates vista, but he has his old XP installation CD, he wants to overwrite his current OS and install XP can he do this without any problems?? he does not want to fork out money for windows 7 OS . thanks for reply's.

If it's an OEM XP CD for a particular machine/brand it probably won't work, you'd need a generic shelf-copy of XP.

Main problem he'll have when installing it is that XP doesn't automatically download drivers, unlike Vista/7/8 which will hunt down what it can, you'll need to track them all down manually to begin with.

That's assuming they exist, a lot of manufacturers stopped making XP drivers when their machines shipped with Vista, so do some research/driver downloading first!

What's his problem with Vista/7? If it's just fear of change/the new then he'll get used to them. Make sure SP1 and 2 are installed as they bring Vista's performance nicely up.

XP is now almost 12 years old, that's an eternity in computing.

[home_alone]

why not install 'Classic Shell' & set it to mimic XP?

[Sandgrownun]

I did this with a desktop. It was painfully slow with Vista so I downgraded to XP and it ran like a dream. I used an OEM version of XP from the desktop the new one was replacing and never had any issues, though the licence was only used on the new PC.

[max99]

Originally Posted by darkknight77

What's his problem with Vista/7?

That's the main question. Does the user genuinely dislike Vista or is there a problem with the PC which is simply being blamed on Vista?