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Installing XP over Vista

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R

RealitySlap8

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I've got a new laptop with vista installed on it and I am trying to take vista off and put XP on it. When I tried booting from the XP install CD, it couldn't find a HDD. I googled it and saw some things about how vista will not let you 'downgrade' the OS. I wiped the HDD clean of vista and XP still will not install.. Any Ideas?

Help is greatly appreciated, thanks
 
best thing to do is to go to the vendor website and see what they have to say about this.
Or call the company directly.

I recently did an xp downgrade of an acer laptop which shipped with vista home basic. The install was no different than anyother xp install. Apart from nuking the partition that vista was on.
 
I was just looking through the Ranish Partition manager and the HDD is empty except for a Master boot record, should I delete that too? or leave it?
 
delete it and create a new ntfs partition. Then see if xp will see the drive with your xp cd.
:) interesting that ranish see the drive...
 
I had no issues when I downgraded. I just did the normal install, deleted the partion Vista was on, and all was good
 
hmm, ranish doesn't seem to want to delete the master boot record.. should I create a new partition using ranish before trying got install xp? ntfs is not an option on the copy of ranish that I am using, perhaps it is on a newer version?
 
bchur83 said:
Also make note, if it is a SATA hard drive, you may need to install drivers for the SATA controller.
Click to expand...

As for that, I don't think it should come into play except maybe for the Santa Rosa platform. My E1705 I got a couple months ago uses a sata hard drive and came with Vista. Instead of wiping the original install on that hard drive out, I simply bought an identical hard drive to the one Dell installed and then loaded XP Pro (SP2) on the new hard drive. I had no problems with XP Pro installing without a sata driver. I wanted to keep the Vista install intact but wanted a fallback in case Vista would mess up on my at work.
 
It is indeed a sata HDD, and I found the driver for it on gateways website. Its a .exe, so I'm a bit confused as to how to install on it the HDD that has no OS..Maybe I'm just over looking something stupid? As to opening it up, I'm a bit apprehensive since it's not my laptop, but as a last resort I will...

The laptop is a Gateway MT6705, if that helps anyone out..
 
Alright, I'm still not getting anywhere. XP cannot find the hdd..

I figured out that it is a seagate HDD and tried using their software that was on the ultimate boot disk, as well as some other programs to try to wipe the hdd. I've tried using ranish to but a fat-32 format on it and then tried installing xp, still nothing. I've found the sata drivers from gateway's site, but they're in .exe format and won't fit on a floppy. I've tried using the chipset's drivers and doing f6 during bootup and it can't find the setuptxt.oem or something..

I'm really at a loss.. help is definitely needed :bang head
 
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