[ancientmysts]

Hey everyone. New here, sorry for this to be my first post but I'm in need of some help. My motherboard recently died on me, bought a new one, only to realize that I have a Gateway OEM system and can no longer use my version of Vista. I have a copy of Windows XP sitting around, and since I'm not that big of a fan of Vista, I figured I'd switch back. Before I get into the problem, I figure I'll give you some info on my system.

Gateway GT5412
nVidia video card 8600 GTS
Coolmax V-500 power supply
New motherboard is a nVidia nForce 680i LT SLI MCP

So, I have a lot of information on my hard drive, stuff I don't want to and can't afford to lose. I'm currently installing my new motherboard, in the process of going in now. Now my question is when I put in my XP boot/install disk, what's going to happen to everything on my hard drive? Will it appear corrupt? Will it all change?

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XP will want to wipe the machine. You can't downgrade to XP and expert all your programs to work.
If you have XP on the machine already you'll get an option to repair other it'll just give you options to wipe the disk.

[Neil Jones]

XP will want to wipe the machine. You can't downgrade to XP and expert all your programs to work.
If you have XP on the machine already you'll get an option to repair other it'll just give you options to wipe the disk.

[123Runner]

If you want to save the data, you need to hook it to another computer as a slave or get a USB hard drive enclosure and hook to another computer.

[Murray S.]

Howdy and welcome to G2G:

I have a copy of Windows XP sitting around,

Where did your copy of XP come from - original Microsoft install cd or with a different system?

As mentioned earlier, XP will wipe the drive requiring you to re-install all drivers, programs, etc.

Murray