I bought a new computer and it has vista ...?

Question

and ive read bout all the probles vista is having and the ram it uses to run I wanted to know if i could put xp on it in place of vista the comp is a hp slimline s3100n 2g ram ..so the question is how do I do this ? (details please) how do i rase what i have to replace with xp ? any info i should know about changing op ? rember im a first timer with this kind of stuff soo please use detail thanks

Answer 1

As stated in the other answers, you can install Windows XP as long as there is driver support for doing so. The details involved in installing an OS are fairly numerous and would be outside the scope of a forum such as this, but it is pretty statghtforward. Just launch the installation from a CD and follow the prompts.

Note, however, that purchasing a computer with an OEM version of Vista does not typically provide downgrade rights to XP. In order to maintain compliance with the license agreement, you will probably need to purchase a full retail copy of XP.

Answer 2

Yes, you can load XP on your system instead of Vista. In effect, you wipe your drive and start over with the XP install ...but why?

Most of the problems associated with Vista relate to it not having drivers for the various hardware components out there. This mostly affects people who are trying to upgrade from XP to Vista.

But in your case, you bought it from a reputable manufacturer who has already loaded the correct drivers for you, and made sure everything is compatible.

So, if you aren't having problems with Vista, stick with it. Don't be too concerned about the stuff you've only read or heard about.

Answer 3

Word of Advice. If choosing to go to Windows XP, make sure you can download the drivers for XP for your computer model and type first. I made the mistake of not getting the drivers first. It will save you a lot of head aches and fighting the install to XP.

And Yes, I dumped Windows Vista on two Brand new computers, for Windows XP.

Answer 4

Well, first you'll need a copy of Windows XP. Then you would just put the disk in the drive and tell the computer to boot from that CD/DVD drive and Windows will guide through the rest. To change your boot order, you'll have to access the bios. To access the bios, you'll have to press a certain button right before windows starts to load up. For my computer, I have to press the "delete" key right when the computer starts up.

This site might help you out on accessing the particular bios you have on your PC.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

Answer 5

Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer

Word of Advice. If choosing to go to Windows XP, make sure you can download the drivers for XP for your computer model and type first. I made the mistake of not getting the drivers first. It will save you a lot of head aches and fighting the install to XP.
[ thank you David for this reminder ]

The question most often asked is "How do I install a dual-boot with Windows XP on my new Windows Vista computer?" The answer is that it's not that difficult, it's just very time consuming, and you need to own a copy of Windows XP.

Note that you should not attempt this if you aren't ready to troubleshoot any problems that might occur.

The first issue we encounter is that computers with pre-installed operating systems take up the entire drive. Luckily Microsoft included the Shrink volume feature in Vista, so we can easily shrink the Vista partition down to make room for XP.

Open the Computer Management panel, which you can find under Administrative tools or by right-clicking the Computer item in the start menu and choosing Manage. Find the Disk Management item in the list and select that.
Now we'll shrink our volume down by right-clicking on the main hard drive and choosing Shrink Volume.
Now you can choose the size that you want to shrink, which really means you are choosing the size that you want your XP partition to be. Whatever you do, don't just use the default. I chose roughly 10gb by entering 10000 into the amount.

The next step might be confusing, because we need to change the cd-rom drive that's invariably taking up D: at the moment, because we want to use D: for the Windows XP partition, but it's already taken by the cd-rom drive. If you skip this step than XP will install onto the E: drive, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not quite as tidy.
Right-click on the cd-rom drive in the list and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu.
Now we'll change the CD drive to use E: by selecting that in the drop-down.
Now we can create a new partition for XP to live on and make sure that the drive letter is set the way we want. If you do not create a partition now the XP install will do so automatically, but it's easier and cleaner to do it this way. Right-click on the Unallocated free space area and then select New Simple Volume from the menu.
Follow through the wizard and select whatever options you'd like, making sure to use D: as the drive letter.

Now you will need to close out of disk management and reboot your computer. This is because we can't do the next step until we reboot. (you can try, but it won't work)

So we've come back from rebooting… open up Computer from the start menu and then right-click on the D: drive and select properties. Give your partition a meaningful name like "XP". It would be wise to name the C: drive to "Vista" at this point as well.

Now you'll want to pop your XP cd into the drive and boot off it. You may have to configure your BIOS to enable booting off the CD drive, or if your computer says something like "Hit Esc for boot menu" you might want to use that.

Once you come to the screen where you can choose the partition to install on, then choose either the unpartitioned space or the new partition you created. Whatever you do, don't try and install onto your Vista partition! See how much cleaner it is now that we've labeled each partition distinctly?

We'll assume XP is completely installed at this point, and you will have lost your ability to boot into Windows Vista, so we'll need to use the VistaBootPro utility to restore the Vista boot loader.

Download and install VistaBootPro from
http://www.vistabootpro.org

During the install you'll be forced to install the .NET 2.0 framework. Open up VistaBootPRO and then click on the System Bootloader tab. Check the "Windows Vista Bootloader" and then "All Drives" radio buttons, and then click on the Install Bootloader button.
At this point, the Windows Vista bootloader is installed and you'll only be able to boot into Vista, but we'll fix that. Instead of manually doing the work, we'll just click the Diagnostics menu item and then choose Run Diagnostics from the menu

This will scan your computer and then automatically fill in the XP version.. click on the "Manage OS Entries" tab and then click in the textbox for Rename OS Entry, and name it something useful like "Windows XP" or "The Windows That Works"

Click the Apply Updates button and then reboot your computer… you should see your shiny new boot manager with both operating systems in the list!

This is a critical piece of information: Windows XP will be installed on the D: drive, even in Windows XP… so you'll need to keep that in mind when tweaking your system.

You can share information between the drives, but I wouldn't recommend messing with the other operating system's partition too much… it might get angry and bite you. Or screw up your files. What I do recommend is that you store most of your files on a third drive shared between the operating systems… you could call that partition "Data".

Answer 6

Well.. i too had this same problem when i bought laptop..
so later i decided to remove it completely and then i installed XP in it.

To install XP. I hope u have the XP cd then restart the system. then press f2 key to go in bios settings.

then u need to change the boot disk to cd rom.
then save the settings and restart the system

then it asks to press any key to boot into Cd

after doing that it goes in blue screen and then asks you few options like press enter then f8 to continue..

then it asks to select in which drive u need to install..

Here dont forget to format the disk u need to install

Format it using fat32. Format it completely

Allow it to finish it till end and in between it asks for things which u can do it easily..

Hope u can do it easily..

Answer 7

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
just follow the steps. just on step five delete your old partition first then continue with the installation.
note: make sure that you have your drivers for your hardware, that is for win xp. you have to download that at hp.
there is an online chat with hp.com that will help you find the downloads for the drivers in winXP for your machine.
hope this helps. thanks.

Answer 8

i love vista, all problems are from people upgrading not from new computers vista is good.

Answer 9

It's better if you stick with vista.

Answer 10

Check out this link...

http://forums.microsoft.com/Genuine/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1505885&SiteID=25