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9 Steps to Blowing away Microsoft Vista on your Laptop
By Chirag | February 7, 2008
In this tutorial, we will run through the process of removing Windows Vista, and replacing it with Windows XP (Home). Vista is very slow and cumbersome, and many of my clients do not want it on their machine, and prefer to move back to the more familiar and user friendly XP.
Here is what you will need to complete this task:
1) A Laptop with Windows Vista Installed
2) A windows XP CD with Serial Key (that contains the latest service pack)
3) The XP version of the drivers for your Laptop
4) Blank DVDs or CDs to backup your data or an External Hard drive
5) A system restore disk to restore Vista to its original state if this process doesn’t work for you
6) An internet connection to validate Windows and to gather updates
7) A bit of time on your hands to go through this whole procedure!
Please note this is only a guide! We will not be liable at all if you lose any data or cause any damage to your PC or Laptop by following the steps in this tutorial! Every system setup is different, so please proceed with extreme caution!!
If you do not know what you are doing, take it to a professional to get done!!
1) Finding the XP Drivers for your Laptop
Don’t forget this step, as you may be a little stuck without it!
If you want to move from Vista to XP, you first have to check that your laptop has the supporting XP drivers. If not, I am afraid you are probably going to be stuck with Vista.
To find these drivers, find the model number of your laptop, and then go to the manufacturers website, and do a search under their support and drivers section. Most companies such as HP make this fairly straight forward to do. If you are unsure which drivers you will need, download them ALL!!! It is better to have extra drivers left over than not having the drivers at all. In saying this, make sure you only download drivers for your particular model of laptop, as getting the wrong driver could cause conflicts.
Here are some helpful links to some of the most common named brand websites where you can start looking for your drivers:
HP/Compaq
Acer
IBM
Toshiba
ASUS
If all else fails and you cannot find the right drivers, try Drivers HQ
Side Note: If you are desperate to remove Vista, and don’t have the supporting XP drivers, there is still hope! In the past week, I have just removed Vista from a Compaq Presario C719TU laptop. The HP website said that XP is NOT supported for this laptop, but I found all the generic drivers and got it working perfectly thanks to a forum post I found!
2) Backup Backup Backup
BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!! Do I really need to say it again? I cannot stress the importance of this step!! If you do not backup, you WILL lose everything. So do not write to me to tell me you have lost all your data and don’t know what to do. You have been forewarned!
If on the off chance, you have decided not to heed this warning, go visit Recover My Lost Files to find data recovery software.
Here is the most common items people backup
- Documents such as Word, Excel., Powerpoint and Database File
- Music Files
- Internet Bookmarks
- Emails
- Photos
- Videos
- Installation files of programs and games
- Passwords and Software Licence Keys that you may require
There may be others, but these are the things that I commonly backup myself. Please note you CANNOT simply copy folders from your Program Files folder in the hope the program will miraculously work when you copy it over to your new setup! This is not how it works!! If you have a program you use frequently, you either need to backup the install file, or have the original installation CDs available!
The easiest way to backup is using a USB flash drive, or an external hard drive! These are very convenient to have, and can make moving your files a lot easier and a lot less time consuming. With the capacity of these external drives, in most cases you can backup your entire hard drive and still have plenty of space for more files! I personally carry with me a 80GB 2.5” External Drive. The 2.5” Drives are the ones most commonly found in your laptop. You can simply go to a computer store, and buy a 2.5” drive and an external case, or buy it as a package.
Another alternative is to buy a 3.5” External Hard Drive. These are a lot bulkier and require an external power source to run them. They are however a lot larger in terms of capacity. I have a 250GB Western Digital MyBook that I use. But when I am backup up only a few files, I still prefer using the smaller and more convenient 2.5” drive.
If you are looking to buy external hard drives, visit our store to get a gauge of what is out there!
Now go through the process of backing up all your data that you require. This tutorial will be long enough, so we will not cover any of the specifics on how to backup emails etc. If you would like a tutorial on backing up emails in Outlook or Thunderbird, please leave a comment, and if there are enough comments, then we will create a tutorial for this.
3) Restore CDs
Most of the latest laptops now come with a restoration system process built into the system. Older systems used to come with CDs already made for you, or a proper Windows CD, but this is no longer the case in the majority of manufacturers. You are able to create restore CDs from this system, so ensure that you do this. If anything goes wrong with your XP installation, you may need to go back to Vista. Usually this process requires 2-3 blank DVDs or up to 9 CDs. Go for the lesser evil if you can, because carrying around 9 Restore CDs everywhere can be a nuisance. These restore CDs will return the laptop to factory defaults if you ever have to use them. So it will return to the state which you first purchased it in.
Some of the new laptops also come with separate partitions (a partition is the creation of a logical division of a hard drive – i.e. splitting the drive into multiple parts so they act as if they are separate drives). The secondary partition is usually inaccessible as it is part of the restoration system. Please note, that the restoration system on the secondary partition will become useless if Vista is not installed on the Laptop, as there is no way to access this! So do not think this is sufficient to recover your system with.
4) Wiping it clean!
Ok so you have now backed up your data, found the XP Drivers and created the Restore CDs, what is next?
5) Blow Vista away for good!
If you are like me and cannot stand the site of Vista and its mountain of problems – both for myself and also to all my clients who constantly complain about how crap it is! Then you will be glad to see the back of it and go back to something a little more stable (but not perfect) in Windows XP.
Now the next step is totally dependant on your Laptop configuration… If you have an IDE of PATA drive (same thing, different names), then you are fine, and don’t really have to worry about the next step.
If however, you have SATA, like with the majority of new laptops, you will need to change a setting in your Bios in order to have your Windows Setup recognize your Hard Drive.
Now if any of this is way over your head, STOP NOW!!! You may want to get someone else to do this for you, or dear I say it… put up with Vista and hope like hell that Service Pack 1 or 2 comes out very very soon.
For users with SATA Hard Drives – restart your Laptop, and boot into your Bios. Every Bios is different, but you can usually enter into it by pressing F1, F10, Esc or Delete. Once in your Bios, you need to go through the configuration until you find something about your Native Sata support. You need to display this, so the drive is recognized as an IDE drive. If you do not do this, you will find that Windows does not detect your hard drive, and YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PROCEED.
6) Format your drive
Right, now you will need to insert your Windows XP CD, and restart your system. On reboot, you will be asked to ‘Hit an key to boot CD’. Hit any key – not THE any key!
You will have to accept the Microsoft agreement, and then it should eventually show the drives on your laptop. If all has gone to plan so far, you should be able to see a drive that you are able to install Windows XP on.
Proceed to format this drive, and simply follow the step by step on screen instructions to install Windows XP.
I have given you enough chances to back out before this point! But now is the crunch time. If you format the drive now, there is no turning back! Like I said, if you find yourself gone past the point of no return, and you want to return there…. Go to Recover My Lost Files and they will have a product to sort you out!
7) Installing the XP Drivers
If you have managed to format and install Windows XP, now the fun begins! Getting the drivers to work. If your laptop comes with XP drivers, then this will be a breeze, but if it did not, you have some fun ahead of you!
Side note: I spent the good part of a day looking for the generic drivers I needed to get my clients laptop running properly!
To make your job easier, you can try a free software driver tool to see if you are able to find the drivers you require if you DO NOT already have the XP drivers you require. This will save you all the time and heartache I went through!! If only I had found this tool before I started my search.
8 ) Check if everything is A OK
If all has gone smoothly, you now have a laptop running on Windows XP! Now remember, as stated at the start of this article, this is only a guide, so do not send me hate mail if something has gone wrong, or I have missed a step! Tell me nicely, and I may think of adding the step into the guide (with your name as a credit next to the added step).
9) Leave me Comments!
Feel free to leave me comments and to vote for my article on Digg!
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