Can you switch from Vista to XP?

[noki]

if the vendor does not have all the drivers for you desired OS, you might want to invest in a program such as Driver Genius to copy all the drivers of your OEM setup. when you finish installing your desired OS you can restore all the drivers of your Vista setup to the new setup via the Restore (or whatever it's called) feature of Driver Genius. good luck.

[Nelson37]

Except the Vista drivers may not work with XP.

With the laptop, I would remove the HD and hook it to a desktop PC with a floppy drive. The adapters are cheap. Research the driver through the chipset used, somebody somewhere almost certainly has one.

I once purchased 5 desktop PC with modem for a customer, they came with ME. Modems had drivers only for ME, none for 98 or XP. Ended up buying 5 modems out of my own pocket and installing them for free. Didn't lose money on the deal, but didn't make much, either.

[oldandinthe way]

The general rule for success when changing the OS on any system is to be certain you have all of the drivers which are required. In versions for the target OS.

This is particularly true of laptops where power management is not standardized.

This is something which often bites folks trying to put up Linux, and they have lots of help from the Linux community.

Move from Vista to XP and there is no support.

[RabidDog]

Microsoft will now allow everyone to upgrade from vista to xp and if you send in your vista box, they will refund the difference in price. (or have I drunk too much eggnog?) 8) Santa Gates.

[thinger62]

For Intel chipset based mobos, you just need to go to support.intel.com site and download latest drivers for XP. Then you have to install XP with F6 option to provide the required drivers.

But...they have to be on a floppy drive - you can't use a USB flash drive etc (well, in my particular case at least). I have the scars to prove it

Maybe not.. Yesterday I changed my Vostro from Vista to XP. I extracted the SATA files to a flash drive and plugged it in. I got to the 'put in disk A' screen and then it read from my flash drive (I can't remember which of the two options I chose at the 'disk A' point. Format and install sailed along nicely then. There is, as mentioned, another option too. Go into the bios and change the drive settings to ide (I think). The Dell forums have loads of specific instructions (probably step by step for every model sold with Vista) on how to do that. Some of the Dell drivers listed for my machine and XP were just plain wrong, but the Dell forums again provided plenty of suggestions for other drivers. It really didn't take very long, just a little searching online. My machine is a lot faster now.

[CrayonEater]

I was able to downgrade my new laptop just last week. Acer has all of the XP drivers on their website.

That's why you buy from a vendor that either offers XP as an option or has drivers available. That's why I buy Acers and Dells and not HPs or Compaqs.

Drivers are tricky things: Their job is to interface the OS to the hardware. That's why so many people here are having problems.

[JohnnyMalaria]

For Intel chipset based mobos, you just need to go to support.intel.com site and download latest drivers for XP. Then you have to install XP with F6 option to provide the required drivers.

But...they have to be on a floppy drive - you can't use a USB flash drive etc (well, in my particular case at least). I have the scars to prove it

Maybe not.. Yesterday I changed my Vostro from Vista to XP. I extracted the SATA files to a flash drive and plugged it in. I got to the 'put in disk A' screen and then it read from my flash drive (I can't remember which of the two options I chose at the 'disk A' point. Format and install sailed along nicely then. There is, as mentioned, another option too. Go into the bios and change the drive settings to ide (I think). The Dell forums have loads of specific instructions (probably step by step for every model sold with Vista) on how to do that. Some of the Dell drivers listed for my machine and XP were just plain wrong, but the Dell forums again provided plenty of suggestions for other drivers. It really didn't take very long, just a little searching online. My machine is a lot faster now.

That's why it is imperative to do your homework before undertaking the OS swap. Some BIOSes can make a USB flash drive appear like a legacy floppy, others can't. In the case of the Dell I was trying to swap, I scoured the earth looking for a correct procedure - nada.

[rumplestiltskin]

I was able to downgrade my new Acer laptop jst last week. Acer has all of the XP drivers on their website.
ark

Did the same for my wife's Acer. When I bought it from TigerDirect, the salesperson pointed me to Acer's website for the appropriate drivers and, after I had DL'd almost 700MB(!) and burned it all to a CD, I booted from a generic XP Pro (SP2) CD, lobotomized the HD, and installed Windows. Even after all of the driver installs and updates, there's still one "device" (in Device Manager) that isn't installed but I can't figure out what it is because everything works! I'm ignoring it and my wife is quite happy with the unit. It's a Sempron so it has no horsepower but, with 1.5GB or RAM, it moves along under its own power and causes no trouble.

I should mention that I did give Vista (what came on the Acer) a chance but, after 10 minute boot times and enough "Allow or Deny?" messages to validate what Apple shows in their TV ad, I did the procedure as outlined above (and washed very thoroughly thereafter). Vista sucks. Don't drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid.