[Debrutsid]

Well to begin with here is my situation.

I bought a new machine with Vista on it. I gave Vista a try, understanding how large Vista as a OS was, I even went so far as upgrading the hardware to run Vista's large size to give Vista a fair chance to impress me. It wasn't horrible but I did run into only one unfixable problem that makes running Vista impossble in my current situation. In the house we have 4 other computers runnning xp and after many long frustrating hours, it's become obvious that vista doesn't want to network with xp.

So I decide to add xp to the machine to fix this problem. I partitioned the drives, following all the tutorials out there to set up a dual boot machine and everything seemed to be working fine. I now have noticed xp is running slow, vista even slower. Whenever I boot into Vista and try to shut down my machine, theres an error message, something about a memory dump or something of the sort, and the machine freezes up for 10 minutes. Another problem, Vista's partition is 154.05GB, 134.89GB being free space, while xp is only 71.76gb. And my machine won't let me shrink the vista partition any smaller. I want that space back.

I decided Vista is being to much of a hassle, so I want to uninstall Vista so I can get my machine running smoothly. I don't have a Vista dvd, so all the tutorials I have found to uninstall vista so far are worthless.

I figure formatting the drive vista on is my safest bet. Since I can't uninstall vista, I don't have the dvd and I won't be able to get a hold of the dvd. Is there anything I need to watch for when formatting away vista? Before I format what about all my drivers? I still don't think I have them all downloaded. Once i;ve formatted vista away what will happen to the recovery partition, will I be able to merge all the partitions together? How would I go about doing this? I do have my old xp disc that I used to intall xp on this machine but I don't have any recovery discs. Suggestions? Options? Help?

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YOU WILL PROBALLY NOT BE ABLE TO INSTALL xp ALONE ON THIS MACHINE ! THE NEWER MACHINES HAVE HARD DRIVES THAT XP CAN NOT SEE AS THERE ARE NO XP DRIVERS FOR THEM!!! TRY TO REMOVE THE PARTITION THAT HAS XP ON IT, INSTALL VIRTUAL PC(MACHINE) AND INSTALL XP IN THE VIRTUAL MACHINE. OH YES, I HAVE HAD NO TROUBLE NETWORKING XP AND VISTA MACHINES TOGETHER (I DO THIS FOR A LIVING) YOU HAVE TO; OPEN CONTROL PANEL/NETWORK AND SHARING/TURN ON NETWORK DISCOVERY

[hfcg]

YOU WILL PROBALLY NOT BE ABLE TO INSTALL xp ALONE ON THIS MACHINE ! THE NEWER MACHINES HAVE HARD DRIVES THAT XP CAN NOT SEE AS THERE ARE NO XP DRIVERS FOR THEM!!! TRY TO REMOVE THE PARTITION THAT HAS XP ON IT, INSTALL VIRTUAL PC(MACHINE) AND INSTALL XP IN THE VIRTUAL MACHINE. OH YES, I HAVE HAD NO TROUBLE NETWORKING XP AND VISTA MACHINES TOGETHER (I DO THIS FOR A LIVING) YOU HAVE TO; OPEN CONTROL PANEL/NETWORK AND SHARING/TURN ON NETWORK DISCOVERY

[Debrutsid]

I have tried everything to get networking to work. Turning on network discovery, making sure i've downloaded all the right protocols, everything. Nothing worked. At the end, I had one of my machines showing up in the networkign map, but you couldn't access it at all. And I need to be able to network with the rest of the computers in the house.

And how new does the system have to be before xp won't work on its own? I would prefer not to have vista at all on my machine, anymore. So if at all possible, I would like to try to get rid of it if possible, before having to deal around it.

[hfcg]

PLEASE TELL ME IT IS NOT VISTA BASIC. BEFORE YOU FORMAT YOUR VISTA HARD DRIVE MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE A RECOVERY DISK TO RESTORE THE VISTA IN CASE XP WILL NOT LOAD. THE NEW HP MACHINES WILL NOT WORK WITH XP. YOU CAN NOT CONNECT BASIC OR PREMIUM TO AN ACTIVE DIRECTORY BUT PREMIUM WILL WORK ON A PEER TO PEER NETWORK, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DOWNLOADED AS FAR AS NETWORKING SOFTWARE. MY MACHINE THAT I TOOK TO WORK HAS PREMIUM AND I HAVE NO TROUBLE CONNECTING TO THE NETWORK BUT I CAN NOT USE THE NOVELL SERVER

[Debrutsid]

Vista home premium is what it says i'm running.
And I'm running a recovery burn cd now.
I'm hoping xp can run without having vista as well

[hfcg]

PLEASE LET ME KNOW HOW THE XP INSTALL GOES. I AM VERY INTERESTED IN THIS AS MANY PEOPLE I KNOW WANT TO ROLL BACK THERE VISTA MACHINES AS WELL

[Mr T.]

Hi guys, Not technically endowed and having problems with my Acer Vista laptop. Seems like every MS patch day brings problems. The machine has had to be reformatted 4 or 5 times now as a direct result of patches causing various trouble even to the extent of Acer installing a new hard drive a week ago.

Luckily I had an Acronis mirror image only a couple of weeks old and restored C from that. Vista ran fine for a day then after all the nags I installed this months MS patches without the optional ones and the puta immediately reverted back to a slug with Explorer taking forever to do anything.

I note a change to XP as being extremely difficult but would this work, boot up from my XP Acronis recovery disc and install a mirror image from the HP XP laptop which would wipe out C drive first installing a working model of XP.

The Acer is a late model machine only 4 months old.

Just a thought anyway, I could try it and if it did not work reinstall Vista from its own image but would like a few thoughts on this course of action as I have not seen it mentioned anywhere.

Edited by Mr T., 26 December 2007 - 04:07 PM.