Whats the best way to downgrade vista to XP?

Strokes

Strokes

New Member
I just found a old XP CD from my old desktop and I never registered XP on it because I had no Internet at the time, so Is there a way to downgrade my Vista to XP without erasing most of my stuff on my HD?
i have a 500 GB external HD, so I'm pretty sure this will be needed.
 
i my self would do a low level format and be done with it. theres freebe proggies out there. or goto the manufacture of the hd. they have a proggy that will wipe. party over. clean install and done.
 
if you bought your computer and it came with vista, then most likely there is no drivers for XP. so if you downgrade then you will not have internet, audio, etc
 
Ive never had a problem detecting a generic installation myself. working on computers for family and xp always detecting the proper drivers. Brian is right in a way and should be considered though. say a laptop. this could be a big problem. then should and could be downloaded from the laptop manufacture. on the other hand something like Emachine. that may be a problem.

if you think it will be a problem then look for a free proggy like drive collector.
never used it yet. never had too. i have a laptop and did try it and backed it up.
 
The only way to put XP on a Vista computer is to format the hard drive and install the new Windows. Just make sure that you find drivers for your ethernet port and other various hardware before you do this and save it in some safe place for later. And unfortunately, you will lose everything that's on the computer right now.
 
DCIScouts said:
And unfortunately, you will lose everything that's on the computer right now.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily..Just use your 500gb external and stick anything you want to keep on that, then do the format and copy the stuff back onto your computers hard drive.
 
when i down graded my dell laptop to xp and i had an audio driver problem,
everything else worked but that, untill i installed service pack 3 then the audio driver worked.
 
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