Vista Home to XP Pro downgrade help???

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by bathrobe, Jul 16, 2008.

  1. bathrobe

    bathrobe

    I purchased a vista home computer a year ago for use unrelated to trading. I now need to use it for trading and I know next to nothing about hardware. My brother says he can wipe vista and intsall XP PRO witn no problem.

    My question is will XP PRO work with the vista machine's existing mobo, ram. etc. ?

    2. If you have done this what were your experiences with this?

    thank you for your help.
    Chris
     
    #1     Jul 16, 2008
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  2. bathrobe

    bathrobe

    If it matters I use IB, Quote tracker, Multicharts, and Button Trader.
     
    #2     Jul 16, 2008
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  3. powerfade

    powerfade

    My experience was this - bought a Vista-loaded Lenovo laptop and Lenovo told me if I wanted to downgrade I would have to do it myself, but they would include the discs.

    I tried to do it using the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery utility. I had some problems and called support. I had to call a couple of times because the first guy said that they weren't obligated to deal with software issues. The guy who eventually helped me told me that in his experience, some Vista installs don't like it when you try to downgrade them to XP. I am not a programmer so take that for whatever it's worth, maybe a programmer can chime in to explain it further.

    I eventually got the machine running with XP, with the help of this particular tech support guy.

    I bought another Vista loaded machine for an elderly couple I know and the machine never worked right - sponataneous shutdowns were the leats of its problems. I downgraded them to XP and now the machine works fine.

    There is no issue with the mobo/RAM as far as I know.
     
    #3     Jul 16, 2008
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  4. JackR

    JackR

    Your brother is correct. He'll be overwriting the Vista and doing a fresh install of XP. However, to do the job correctly you need to get the drivers (ask your brother) for any specialized components that might be installed on the machine. The drivers are for things like an ethernet port, the display and display card, especially a flat panel display, and the USB port if the XP version is older. They differ from the Vista drivers but can readily be downloaded from the manufacturer's web sites. In addition, there may be some utility software provided by the machine manufacturer that helps in doing some tasks.

    Download them ahead of time and save them to a USB drive or write them to a CD/DVD.

    Also, depending on the version of XP you have you'll spend a while downloading the latest service pack.

    Jack
     
    #4     Jul 16, 2008
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