Downgrading to XP from Vista

Hexadic

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Joined
28 Oct 2007
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My husband just received a new Toshiba laptop with Vista installed.
Long story short....we hate Vista!
After working with both XP Pro and Home on our business and home desktop this new OS is nothing less than a huge pain in the toosh!
Does anyone know how to install XP? I purchased a disk but the option to install XP is grayed out.
And yes we have tried the "classic view" and no, it still doesn't hold a flame to XP. Vista's a flop.:mad:


Thanx much
HLC
 
Welsome to the site, Hexadic.

You can boot the laptop with your XP cd in the tray, and then follow the directions to wipe out the partitions, create and reformat the hard drive , and install XP into your laptop. By booting with the CD first, Vista never gets to load.

Do some research first on the Toshiba site, as some of the hardware on your Toshiba laptop might have Vista only drivers. See if you can find drivers for XP for your model number laptop,



Heeter
 
and dont call it a downgrade ;) xp is quite the opposite
 
You will have to make sure you have the proper drivers. You might find that it won't install because of not having them. If you get bsods while trying to put xp back in you will know it ...
 
..... seems quite a few people here now dislike Vista? i've been running it for a few months now just fine, and honestly.... it's BETTER than XP. so i lose a fps or a few when gaming..... big whoop. not like it's noticable unless you're the type to stare at a fps counter like FRAPS while you're gaming. Boots faster.... looks nicer.... and for me, runs better than XP ever did on my rig. Only time i ever get a BSOD is if i try to put my memory up to it's rated speeds. again.... big whoop. slightly slower RAM speeds isn't a HUGE performance hit.
 
My husband just received a new Toshiba laptop with Vista installed.
Long story short....we hate Vista!
After working with both XP Pro and Home on our business and home desktop this new OS is nothing less than a huge pain in the toosh!
Does anyone know how to install XP? I purchased a disk but the option to install XP is grayed out.
And yes we have tried the "classic view" and no, it still doesn't hold a flame to XP. Vista's a flop.:mad:


Thanx much
HLC

If you just got it and it's still within 30 days (I think, could be longer or not) why not just return it and get the same brand/model but with XP installed? It would make life easier for you as you don't have to do anything as to installing XP over Vista and having to deal with the driver issues and such. It would be something to look in to.
 
If your going to replace Vista with XP outside of what has been said also make sure you have a way to put Vista back on it. Yes Vista is a pain in the back side from what I've read, even used Vista some myself and find it to be about as fast as Windows 2000 doing a lot of things. I also think its overhyped but not in the mood to stick XP on my new laptop, will just learn to use Vista and yes I could have gotten XP on said laptop but choose Vista
 
Maybe you don't like Vista cause of all the preloaded software that came installed on the laptop?

I have had Vista since the first day it came out. I would never go back. I have had no issues at all?
 
vista a curse on the modern world..... :)
 
Welcome to OSNN.

Toshiba does not support upgrading from VISTA to XP. PERIOD! If you do so you are on your own.

I recently purchased a Toshiba and have fully researched and made the transition.

Dell and Compaq do support the changeover and are prefered for this reason. If you can, I recommned a return and change of brand.

Correction on 10-31 coutesy of:
@LeeJend - Dell does not support down grading from Vista to XP. I called them and asked about it for my PC. They told me that if I do downgrade I loose all warantee and the like with it. They recommended me to stay with vista till my warantee runs out. By which point they "Should" have Vista SP1 out.
Looks like the only Dell option is to buy it with XP.

If you are stuck with the Toshiba I have fairly successfully worked through the process and can help. To retain your hardware warantee (forget about Toshiba support, if you do this you are on your own) you want to setup your PC as a dual boot system where XP has 50-80% of the harddisk assigned and VISTA and the Toshiba recovery center get the rest.

First you need a legit copy of XP with activation possible.
Next you need to go through device manager on VISTA and identify all of your hardware devices and the manufacturer and version (CPU, chipset, wifi, lan, audio, HD, DVD, etc.)
Third you need to scrounge (and this is scrounging, Toshiba will hide what you need) all of the drivers for XP for the devices identified.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=757&lang=eng
possibly http://www.atheros.com/news/linux.html for wireless
possibly www.realtek.com for audio
possibly AMD if you have one of the rare AMD based laptops

You will find some of what you need on the Toshiba site listed for other laptop models. It depends on the chipsets your laptop uses. European and Canadian Toshiba websites are more use full than the USA sites. A major problem will be if you got your laptop at a USA computer retailer Each of these is uniquely configured for the retailer and finding equivalent models is nto trivial.
http://209.167.114.38/support/download/ln_byModel.asp


This site has a good tutorial and link to a tool you will need to setup the VISTA dual boot system more easily.
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

The 6 month long thread I used to help scrounge what I needed. You need to skim through the whole thing and look for models/issues similar to what you run into:
http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/showthread.php?t=175186&page=3

I was successful in setting up XP to about 95% and I have a great laptop that I got dirt cheap and runs well with XP. With VISTA it is a useless slug devouring resources. I did have to install after (free) market products for power regulation to reduce screen brightness and throttling CPU speed to keep the battery charge life you get under VISTA.

WARNING - When re-partitioning your HD to add XP do not wipe out the Toshiba system recovery partition or delete the VISTA install partition! You can use the system recovery partition or the recovery CDs provided by Toshiba if the dual boot set up goes bad and you need to start over.

Repost or PM me if you need help getting the power management working. I used GAPA for manual brightness control and Winthrottle for automatic CPU control. Roghtmakr is the recommended PCU control utility but it wouldnot work on my laptop/chipset.

If you want to try and improve VISTA I got substantial improvements (it still sucks compared to XP) by:
Adding 1 gig ram for 1.5 gig total.
Remove the junk, resource hog macafee AV suite and install AVS (free) or another (not NORTON).
Anything else you don't NEED remove from the HD and/or start up menu.

As for VISTA being good? Any new OS that requires me to throw away more paid for $oftware investment than the purchase price of the new PC is junk! It has a few nice features and some immensely annoying ones. In a year or two and if MS provides free upgrades to all my other software VISTA may be worth using. Of couse it is still a resource hog that turns a perfectly good PC into a dog.
 
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lee make sure you make it as complicated as possible, she is now probably throwing the laptop out the window in discust at the amount of work involved. haha :)
 
Well he is not LeeJend is not pulling any punches and is dead on the money with everything involved to make a changeover on a preinstalled toshiba. It is a major pain in arse, and toshiba is worthless in helping the consumer. I think they are on microsofts vista payroll by they way they act.
 
Most of what Leejend said should work fine for your needs hex. But, I would consider a return and purchase an alternate product if possible simply due to warranty implications.

Btw, I disagree with the vast majority of negative comments regarding vista. As long as you have mid-ish range system with 2gb of memory, no issues. Memory is dirt cheap these days. 1.5gb is redundant IMO.
 
Well as I first said, return get another one with XP. Or, as others have said, return and get another brand with XP on in. As for what everyone is saying as to Vista problems and that it's more geared toward a mem and/or hardware thing and the few that just don't like it, maybe we should ask Hexadic why they (Her and Hubby) don't like Vista. Is it having problems? Errors (BSOD), slow performance, conflicts with programs, or what? Or maybe ya just don't like it? Just for curiosity sake really. :)
 
lee make sure you make it as complicated as possible, she is now probably throwing the laptop out the window in discust at the amount of work involved. haha :)

lancer - I did not make it that complicated, Toshiba did. Which really hacks me off because I love this laptop (with XP installed). It took me two weeks to get XP running right with the "0" support policy of Toshiba. It is not something I would encourage anyone but a power user to attempt.

But my message was that it can be done.
 
33% un-satisfaction is not that bad, especially when you consider the sheer number of people dis-satisfied out of pure inertia.

Businesses purchase for their needs. Given that 3'rd party software makers, who are the overwhelming reason why most of the issues with Vista exist, have dropped the ball big-time regarding their alleged support, businesses are not inclined to move.

Why move when stuff that works now will not work later because the vendor who technically has only had about 2 odd years now to fix their application has instead chosen to do the bare minimum?

I use Vista 100%, home and office and in the workplace I am in, almost all the applications are XP oriented and yet, there are no issues in compatability and my performance, especially when it comes to VPN scripts and related items, is well above that of my XP based configuration. Keep in mind, 99% of my colleagues are on XP still because I am on a Vista pilot, along with some other people. Everyone who has Vista, other than myself, was apprehensive but wanted to try it.

After 1 month, every single one of them loved it :)

On the flip-side, pretty much everyone who is currently using XP has heard that Vista sucks from the extremely vocal minority and therefore they too say it sucks. But when they use the same tools on Vista, use Sleep mode, desktop search, natural language search, per application volume control and many other tools and see the speed, the added features and power, they are no longer apprehensive.

In Hex's case, there is a bad-experience all-around. It seems that the product may not have been right for whatever reason. Let us know the outcome Hex and we hope for the best :)

And don't write off Vista yet. It would be a shame to just singularly dismiss it. I wavered initially, sticking to what I KNEW was good (XP) while dabbling with Feisty Fawn. But once I began to actually use Vista, that's all I wanted to bother with anymore.
 
lancer - I did not make it that complicated, Toshiba did. Which really hacks me off because I love this laptop (with XP installed). It took me two weeks to get XP running right with the "0" support policy of Toshiba. It is not something I would encourage anyone but a power user to attempt.

But my message was that it can be done.

leejend i was completely joking.

sazar, personally i've used vista a lot, here is an example:

i have two identical laptops, except one has xp and one vista.

when i render say a ten min avi clip in premiere pro on the xp machine is takes about 2 1/2 mins. when i do the same on the vista laptop (exactly the same hardware) it takes 6 mins.

vista is overly resource intensive. for me, i need my machine to run my installed programs as fast as possible, not for the o/s to use up my resources before the apps even have a look-in.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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