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Replacing Vista with XP -- tricky?

Q

Quagmire02

n00b
Joined
May 17, 2005
Messages
60
I have a laptop that came with Vista and I really despise that OS. I want to remove it and install XP instead. Problem is, I put my XP cd in and go to boot from it and when it asks me which drive I want to install to and format, it doesn't give me my C: drive as an option -- just the D:

Why is that? I just want to wipe this thing clean and install XP.

Thanks for any help guys.
 
Is D part of the hard drive? If so, than it should be fine. If not, you might need to change the SATA controller to use IDE on the BIOS instead of AHCI.

You also should check to verify that you can get drivers for all the hardware first. Then, you can use any third party drive cleaner to wipe the drive clean, and then boot from the XP CD as normal.
 
D is part of the hard drive, but only a small partition. The Vista OS is on C, and that's what I need to wipe out.
 
I'd think any tool would be able to do it. I use gdisk on a bootable USB Flash Drive, but PartedMagic should do it as well, and it is free. Then make sure your BIOS settings are correct as well.

This, again, is all assuming you have the drivers downloaded for XP for your laptop.
 
Quagmire02 said:
It's buggy, slow, annoying, and won't run this sales call recording program I have. It's blue-screening a lot, etc. I would just like to wipe it clean and have XP on there...
Click to expand...

where did you get the laptop? sounds like they didnt install proper drivers..

have you tried running your sales call program in compaitbility mode?

vista isnt so bad, it is not buggy, it could be slow pending on your laptop specs..
 
The OP has tried vista and isn't asking for help with it. There are plenty threads around here about vista sucking, not sucking, and why someone should or shouldn't use it. Lets keep to his topic...
 
MrGuvernment said:
where did you get the laptop? sounds like they didnt install proper drivers..

have you tried running your sales call program in compaitbility mode?

vista isnt so bad, it is not buggy, it could be slow pending on your laptop specs..
Click to expand...

100 bucks he's making up all the complaints and none of it's actually happening.. except possibly his company software.
 
MrGuvernment said:
where did you get the laptop? sounds like they didnt install proper drivers..

have you tried running your sales call program in compaitbility mode?

vista isnt so bad, it is not buggy, it could be slow pending on your laptop specs..
Click to expand...

Its a Gateway ML6720 -- got it from Newegg. I'll try running the program in compatibility mode, but that wont stop the blue screens.
 
Here's the other thing -- I'm not finding an option in BIOS to disable SATA . Is this C: drive going to be hidden away forever? This is quite frustrating...
 
You aren't looking to disable SATA....you are looking to change the mode....and this would be done after you wipe the drive clean.
 
DeaconFrost said:
You aren't looking to disable SATA....you are looking to change the mode....and this would be done after you wipe the drive clean.
Click to expand...

Oh ok -- but I can't wipe the drive clean because when I boot to my XP cd setup it does not recognize the C: drive when it asks me where I want to install. My understanding is that you can usually format a drive before XP installation with the XP disc.

Otherwise, what is the easiest way to format the drive without using the XP disk? And even if I do, I'd still have the trouble of the XP cd not recognizing C: as an open drive to install on.
 
You should take some time to read back through this thread, because you seem to be missing some info. Use a 3rd party tool, like the ones I suggested above to wipe the drive clean. Then check the mode options in the BIOS.

Once you wipe the drive, there won't be any partitions on the drive, so there won't be a C: remaining to be discovered. You'd have a blank drive ready for the XP install process.
 
Quagmire02 said:
It's buggy,
Click to expand...
I have not noticed any bugs in my Vista X64. I'm sorry to hear that.
slow,
Click to expand...
Vista x64 runs wonderfully on my system, sorry to hear yours is slow :(
annoying,
Click to expand...
I agree the UAC is annoying, and some people including myself don't like the animated windows, so I turned those off and now everything is wonderful.
and won't run this sales call recording program I have.
Click to expand...
Have you tried running it in XP compatibility mode? Also keep in mind that a software like that needs to be ran as an administrator so either right click and run as admin to fix the problem, or by disabling the UAC will remove that requirement. It makes Vista much more secure, which is good. You can disable the UAC in control panel under, users, then users, then click on "turn User Account Control on or off"

It's blue-screening a lot
Click to expand...
Oh that definitely sounds like a hardware issue. Laptops tend to blue screen due to over heating. You should probably send it in for warranty service or at least make sure you're using it on a flat surface so the fans don't get blocked off. Also run the Windows Update (located under security in control panel) because if they shipped with bad drivers from your manufacturer, sometimes that can cause it.

It took me about a week to fall in love with Vista. I didn't go into it with any preconceived notion of bugs or misfortune, I was going to make up my own mind becuase a lot of problems people have with Vista they create themselves. I realized that it's possibly the best OS improvement Microsoft has released since Windows 95.

Good luck!
 
You need to go into the BIOS and change the Sata mode from AHCI (which its most likely set at) to compatable or enhanced, that way XP will see the drive and be able to use it.
You need to do this before you boot from the XP CD to install from.
When your in the XP setup prompts, youll want to delete all the partitions, then recreate one C drive and install XP onto that.

Did you check first to make sure all the XP drivers are available for all the hardware in the system?
chipset, nic, wireless, audio, video, any SD/mem card readers, touchpad, etc...
 
I don't think it's the SATA mode, guys. He states above that he can only see a D: drive. When asked if D: was part of his hard drive, he said:

D is part of the hard drive, but only a small partition. The Vista OS is on C, and that's what I need to wipe out.
Click to expand...

If he's seeing D:, and it's part of the hard drive that he's trying to format, then XP is seeing his drive controller. It's most likely a filesystem issue and the XP installer isn't quite sure what it is. I've seen that happen before, but it's been a while. It's like using a 95 boot disk to format a NTFS partition -- FDISK just can't see it.

Browse back and check out the post by DeaconFrost where he's recommending some third party utilities to you. You're most likely going to have to boot up using one of those tools, remove the partition, then boot back to the WinXP setup and do your installation.

Could it be encryption? If the partition is encrypted, maybe XP doesn't recognize it or won't let you format it until it's unencrypted?
 
Geez, you people... making simple things so complicated... bleh. That second partition isn't encrypted, it's using a different partition type so it's not "visible" to most tools and utilities. Gateway stores the factory restore backups here, so read on.

Anywho... to the OP:

If the laptop still has Vista on it, what you're going to need to do is make the Gateway Recovery DVD using the tool located on the Start Menu someplace. The second partition on the hard drive right now contains the necessary files to do a proper factory restore on that laptop, but it requires you to make the DVD first. Find the tool on the Start Menu, make the DVD(s) as required, stash it in a safe place so you have it because if and when you continue to the next step, you're going to encounter a big problem if you ever decide to restore that laptop to Vista anyway - without that Recovery/Restore DVD, you're screwed. So that's the first and most important step: giving yourself an out by making that DVD before you worry too much about XP.

Step two: you need to verify that there are drivers available for the hardware for XP. I'd say there's a 99.9% chance that there are drivers for each device for XP, but the one place you're going to encounter an issue will be the Sigmatel audio chip. Under XP (and Vista too, actually) there are two drivers that matter: the Intel/Microsoft UAA driver (Vista handles this by default, but XP won't), and the actual Sigmatel drivers themselves. You have to get the Intel/Microsoft UAA driver installed first - and I do mean first - and then you can install the Sigmatel drivers.

One thing to note: Sigmatel was recently bought out by IDT so now they call them the IDT drivers. Dell has a lot of Sigmatel drivers for their machines that will work on other brands of computers with Sigmatel in them also, so they're worth checking out if you can't find the drivers you need directly from Gateway or Sigmatel (now IDT).

After you've located drivers for all the hardware, you're going to insert the XP CD into the drive, reboot the computer off that CD, and when you get to the partitioning screen in XP Setup, you're going to delete every partition off that hard drive. You've got to get rid of Vista, and that means every trace of it or you'll have some issues later on. Delete each and every partition on the drive, leave the entire drivespace unallocated, and then set it up as you wish for XP (one big partition, or a small system partition maybe 30-40GB in size, the rest going to another partition for storage/backups, whatever you have in mind).

Next step would be formatting so obviously QuickFormat the system partition where the OS is going, and that's that.

After XP is up and running, I'd say get the NIC driver installed first, installed your AV software if you have any, get online, update the AV software as required, then start installing drivers from there starting with chipset first, then video, then work on the audio and see if it's going to cooperate. If you get the Intel/Microsoft UAA driver installed and the Sigmatel/IDT drivers installed and you still get the yellow exclamation point, something went wrong with the installation and you'll need to try again. That Sigmatel thing coupled with the Intel/Microsoft UAA driver is a complete bitch in some situations, hopefully it won't be for you.

After that, you're pretty much done. My suggestion is to make yourself a "new" XP installation CD with XP SP3 integrated before doing all of this. If you do, when the laptop is up and running, when you hit Windows Update you'll only need to grab a few updates instead of nearly 200MB of 'em from post-SP2. Make things easier on yourself and just make an XP SP3 installer CD and be done with it.

NEXT!!!
 
I wonder if that will stop the blue-screening. It does it at different times, but an annoying when is right before it starts to boot Windows. It blue screens and restarts. Safe mode doesn't fix that either, so I'm wondering if it's even a driver issue at all...
 
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, you'll also want to disable automatic reboots on a BSoD. This way, you'll at least be able to write down the codes and find out what's going on.
 
Another easy way is to pull the hard drive out and format it on another computer, Hp was another out fit that had its recovery info on a separate partition. Or if you have the time to do it the old way with fdisk in dos,:eek: but for me its easier just to pull the hard drive out, ;)
 
Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Startup And Recovery Settings > Automatically restart (uncheck).
 
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