Category: Geeks r Us
My appologies if this topic has been discussed, just direct me to that thread.
I notice most people on the board are saying avoid Vista. Well, if someone has bought a laptop with vista on it, how do they go about switching back?
My parents laptop is only a few months old and people are already telling them it is slow. This makes no sense to me, they hardly do anything on it. Also, they are having a heck of a time with Vista! I could help them a lot more, if they were running xp.
What's your thoughts -- advice?
1. brand? check to see if the website of yoru brand offers drivers for the laptop that supports xp. Newer computers which runs the the vista OS has a hard time "downgrading" to xp. I know the the m1330 of dells has everything but the audio driver.
2. If you can not find any drivers or support for the "downgrading" process, I would refrain from attempting it; as it will void your warrantee. Of course if you are a savvy computer type, you can restore it back to the way it was and those tech would not be the wiser.
3. use jaws 8.02 as it is compatible with vista, or if you have 9, the better.
Downgrading to xp will be a nightmare if you do not have a virtual environment to test things as MS will make it near impossible in order to push its new product. Afterall, if MS made is easy to downgrade, no one would have incentives to throw money in to their pockets hand over fist.
there should be a way to refformat the hard drive, (0 bytes used by any files stored) . Bios and other components would run fine. Get a bootable disk (google is your friend) and then make an unatended insall for windows. I have a wizzard that can aid you with this, drop me a line if you wish to grab from my ftp. Otherwise, there are other program out there, or in the blind cool tech podcasts site there is a tutorial on how to create an automated windows install (the second one) since it does use disquetes. The tutorial mind you has a very slow speech rate. Anyway, good look with the downgrading process.
One thing that i'm about 99% sure you'll have to watch out for is the type of harddrive the computer has.
Most newer computers (ie: that have come with vista) will have a type of harddrive not supported by default in xp called sata.
Obveously the install can't commence untill sata drivers are provided, so unless your unattended install has sata drivers intergreated, it will just sit there on a error.
Are you actually going to downgrade this machine? I can post a more comprehencive answer if you are but i dont really feel like writing a tutorial if your not.
Hth, BEN.