Is there a way I can go back to XP from Vista? My machine came with XP, I then got a Vista upgrade disk in the mail and installed it. How cam I go back to XP? Thanks.

Not without wiping the machine.

Anyway, according to the rumour mill, if you upgrade to Vista from XP, your XP product key becomes invalid, won't activate anymore and therefore you need to buy a new one of those as well.

No, you wouldn't lose your XP activation.
Boot with your XP disk, choose Recovery and go to a cmd prompt. Type fixboot (Enter) then type fixMBR (Enter)and you should be able to install XP without problems. It worked for me.

I upgraded from xp pro to vista home basic. I then, like many, wanted to revert back to xp pro. When I insert the cd it says that xp pro setup cannot recognize any prior versions of windows. Do I need to buy a full version of xp, or would I be able to use the recovery disc for my laptop and revert it back to factory status? Any ideas, let me know, thanks.

If you have Vista on the machine and you upgraded from XP, the only way to get shot of Vista is to either use any provided recovery media (assuming the upgrade didn't wipe the part of the drive holding this information) or use an XP CD to rip all the partitions out and wipe the drive.

It is not necessary to buy another copy of XP, as Microsoft themselves approve of dual booting.
If you cannot choose how to install using your xP disk, then apply fixboot and fixMBR at the Rescovery console and then you should be able to install or use diskpart to repartition your drive.

If you wipe the drive drive with Vista on you may not be able to use your XP disk to reinstall if the Vista boot.ini file is not modified.

This post has been edited by failya: May 7 2007, 10:59 AM