[intake]

Hi,

I recently got a Gateway GT5432 which came with Vista Home Premium. I would like to know if there is any way i could get rid of Vista and install Windows XP instead. Thanks for your help!

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It is very tricky to get XP to work on a machine that was pre-installed with Vista. It can be done, but researching the drivers is very tedious work unless your manufacturer provides them, and I believe that Gateway does not.

But in any case, the first thing you would need is a legal copy of Windows XP. Then you will have to research your hardware to see who the manufacturer of the chipset is, then download the appropriate driver for the chip.

In the end, it's difficult to do this and I recommend that you just buy a laptop with XP pre-installed.

[Gravity Gripp]

It is very tricky to get XP to work on a machine that was pre-installed with Vista. It can be done, but researching the drivers is very tedious work unless your manufacturer provides them, and I believe that Gateway does not.

But in any case, the first thing you would need is a legal copy of Windows XP. Then you will have to research your hardware to see who the manufacturer of the chipset is, then download the appropriate driver for the chip.

In the end, it's difficult to do this and I recommend that you just buy a laptop with XP pre-installed.

[Tyger]

Gravity Gripp is right, this is something you want to be very careful about. First go to the Gateway site and see if they have made versions of this machine that had XP installed on it. You will probably need to go to the Driver and Download section and see if there are drivers for XP. Also your Vista installation files will probably be installed on a partition of your hard drive, you will probably want to keep them in case you reinstall. At least back them up to a DVD so you will have them, and don't format that partition. Right now I'm on a machine that had Vista but I removed that hard drive and put it in a safe place, put a new one in and installed PCLinuxOS on it, and that is what I'm using now.