Just won (in a raffle) a Toshiba Satellite A130-ST1311.
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.t...on=Add&tab=

I hate the Vista on it and would like to purchase an OEM of XP Pro and install it, even if I have to reformat the hard drive. But I am VERY newbie at this, and am afraid that I won't be able to find all the drivers, etc, to get it up and running.

Can someone please give me a dumbed-down, step by step, instruction on how to proceed?

It can be a very complicated process. I would just leave Vista on it because finding all of the the drivers is a very tedious job. I recently did the same and still unable to find all the drivers for everything.

This post has been edited by ttsstr5: Sep 25 2008, 08:20 PM

Vista is very user-configurable

What is it you hate about it?

If you could be specific, I'm sure one of the Vista experts can walk you through disabling the bits & pieces you don't like, like Aero for example.

This post has been edited by Jonesey: Sep 26 2008, 02:20 AM

Doesn't really matter what we think of Vista. He is asking how to format and install XP and whether or not it is difficult, not what our opinion of Vista is.

Obsessed. It is actually not difficult once you obtain the XP OEM cd to format and install xp upon your computer.

I will gladly walk you through the process once you obtain the cd, and I will list the drivers you will need and how to get them.

Do you have a usb flash drive? It may be handy to get them. Usually when you format the pc xp will not know what any of the hardware is on your machine thus it will not be able to connect to the internet to obtain the drivers you do need. Therefore you need either a usb flash drive and access to another pc (so that you may download the drivers, drop them on the flash drive, then plug the flash drive into the laptop and install from there) and/or a cd burner and another pc (or if the toshiba can burn cds you can download the drivers now to cd, then burn, then format etc...

Let me know when you obtain the xp cd, and we'll go from there.


Starting with reference on the specs of your laptop.
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su...kceghdgngdgmn.0

This post has been edited by AitrusSkyy: Sep 26 2008, 10:06 AM

Jonesey's comment was not an attempt at pushing his opinion about Vista onto another person. He was simply informing Obsessed that Vista can be customized to better fit his preferrences, and tried to find out what he didn't like about Vista. Since this site does not have a marketing agenda, advice on what you could do to save money should be more then welcome. It would be up to the Obsessed to determine if he is willing to take the advice, or to continue on with his purchase, and installation of XP. I think you need to rethink your posting habits when you turn down one user's advice on behalf of another user.

Thank you Granz00


For the information of AitrusSkyy, I actually run XP myself, as Vista isn't without it's problems.

Like most other people on here who attempt to give their advice, I was pointing out to the OP that there's more than one way to solve his particular problem, without having to resort to reformat his hard drive, download drivers, and probably get into more of a mess than tweaking Vista slightly to remove some of the functionality that bugs him.

Shame we can't do that with some people on here.

No problem. I meant no offense. I just like to keep things on topic, basically stick to the question at hand. I'm sure there are plenty of things you can do to improve Vista, shutting off aero, turning of UAC, turning of Windows defender, services etc... but he didn't really say what bothers him about it. The real reason I said something about your post is because personally it's a tad annoying in tech forums when someone asks for help, and someone posts an answer that isn't an answer at all. Take like 2-8 people doing that, you get a topic flooded with information the OP didn't even ask for. It a pet peve of mine. Sorry if I offended you.

I myself use xp also, my wife uses Vista and it is kind of growing on me. I just don't like having to have 4GB of ram to enjoy the full experience with no issues. I hear Windows 7 is in the making...