Installing XP over Vista

[Guest]

I am running Vista Home Premium 64bit. Due to compatibility issues and things
just not working correctly, I want to replace Vista with XP Pro. When I put
my XP disc in, the option to install XP is grayed out and I can't select it.
Is there any way around this?

My XP disc is so old it is not bootable, nor does it contain SP1. I would
just wipe the hard drive and use the boot floppy discs I have, but I don't
know if my antique version of XP will recognize my SATA hard drive.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Malke]

I am running Vista Home Premium 64bit. Due to compatibility issues and things
just not working correctly, I want to replace Vista with XP Pro. When I put
my XP disc in, the option to install XP is grayed out and I can't select it.
Is there any way around this?

My XP disc is so old it is not bootable, nor does it contain SP1. I would
just wipe the hard drive and use the boot floppy discs I have, but I don't
know if my antique version of XP will recognize my SATA hard drive.

Any help is appreciated.

If your XP install disk is scratched, you can borrow a friend's install
disk as long as it matches the version of XP for which you have the
Product Key. You should first check to make sure that you have XP
drivers for all your hardware and yes, you will need your drive
controller drivers on a floppy disk. You can also create a slipstreamed
install CD that has the drive controller drivers on it.

Slipstream RAID or SATA controller drivers:
http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/36/SESSID=8b0c51fd6eca712e465d2e6f79256fc8/

Once you have a good XP install disk, all your drivers, and the drive
controller drivers on floppy (or slipstreamed into the install CD),
follow these instructions for a clean install:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows -
What you will need on-hand


Malke

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

You can't install XP over Vista. The installation partition will have to be
removed and recreated, then formatted before installation can proceed due to
changes in the implementation of the file system (meaning you can't install
XP into an NTFS volume created and formatted by Vista even though it can
read it). This can be done as part of setup when the XP disk is booted, and
by the way all retail XP disks are bootable, even the "gold" ones, there
should be no reason to use floppies as long as the computer's BIOS supports
booting from an optical drive. If your SATA disk is not natively supported
in XP (and many weren't), you will need a driver on floppy to install during
setup regardless of the age of the disk.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Ian Betts]

Well if you do not have a a bootable XP CD your floppy start up disks will
only give you a driver for the CD and a doss prompt to run fdisk. This will
not make your XP CD recognize the SATA so you will need a bootable XP. But
why not run the Vista.

 

[Guest]

Thanks guys for the help. I really appreciate it.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Ian

There is a point in the install where you are prompted to install drivers.
If I remember correctly, you press the F6 key and install the drivers from a
floppy disk.