Uninstall Vista

J

JoeM

I need some help. I purchased a brand new computer thru E-Bay. I bought it
with Vista Home Premium. I am a musician and use Sonar 5 for my music.
However, I find that Vista is not compatible with Sonar 5. Major expense and
major bummer. My system latency is horrible and live recording has become a
disaster. This is after several efforts to make the systems compatible.
However, my old XP worked great with Sonar 5. I have now spent 2 days trying
to uninstall Vista and I can tell you I am so ...frustrated...

I read the suggestions from
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
and they worked up until I booted XP from the CD ROM. It loaded all the
files but did not identiy the any disk drive or partitions. When I pressed
ENTER to install XP, it said it could not find the disk drive and Quit the
installation. So, Vista is somehow hiding my disk drive from XP. My next
thought was to delete all files from C: using format c: from the
Administrator.cmd.exe but I am concerned that it will destroy the NTFS
format. So, I need some help..

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
 
M

Malke

JoeM said:
I need some help. I purchased a brand new computer thru E-Bay. I bought it
with Vista Home Premium. I am a musician and use Sonar 5 for my music.
However, I find that Vista is not compatible with Sonar 5. Major expense and
major bummer. My system latency is horrible and live recording has become a
disaster. This is after several efforts to make the systems compatible.
However, my old XP worked great with Sonar 5. I have now spent 2 days trying
to uninstall Vista and I can tell you I am so ...frustrated...

I read the suggestions from
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
and they worked up until I booted XP from the CD ROM. It loaded all the
files but did not identiy the any disk drive or partitions. When I pressed
ENTER to install XP, it said it could not find the disk drive and Quit the
installation. So, Vista is somehow hiding my disk drive from XP. My next
thought was to delete all files from C: using format c: from the
Administrator.cmd.exe but I am concerned that it will destroy the NTFS
format. So, I need some help..

Vista isn't hiding your drive - it's probably a SATA and XP doesn't have
the drive controller drivers for it. You need to get them and have them
on a floppy (or slipstream them into your XP install media).

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/

Here is general information about replacing Vista with XP:

A. On an OEM (HP, Sony, etc.) computer:

1. Go to the OEM's website and look for XP drivers for your specific
model computer. If there are no XP drivers, then you can't install XP.
End of story. If there are drivers, download them and store on a CD-R or
USB thumbdrive; you'll need them after you install XP.

2. Check with the OEM - either from their tech support website or by
calling them - to see if you will void your warranty if you do this. If
you will void the warranty, you make the decision.

3. If the OEM does support XP on the machine, call them and see if you
can have downgrade rights and have them send you an XP restore disk.
This will be far the easiest and best way of getting XP on the machine.

4. If XP is supported on the machine but the OEM doesn't have an XP
restore disk for you, understand that you'll need to purchase a retail
copy of XP from your favorite online or brick/mortar store.

5. Also understand that you will need to do a clean install of XP so if
you have any data you want, back it up first.

6. If none of the above is applicable to you because you can't run XP on
that machine (see Item #1 above), return the computer and purchase one
running XP instead.

B. On a generic/home-built computer (from non-OEM company) - You will
need drivers for all your hardware. See the second link below for more
details:

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


Malke
 
C

Cameron Snyder

Seems it's Sonar 5 that is not compatible with Vista. You know the current
version is Sonar 7. I don't know why you want to go to all the trouble to
buy a new machine install an old XP copy to run an out-of-date application
when you can just upgrade Sonar and then everything is today man. You are
thinking upside down.
 
R

Rick Rogers

Hi Joe,

You will need to do more than just format.

You may need to load a sata driver depending on the hardware. Once Vista
setup can find the hard drive, you will need to delete the existing system
volume (C:\), then create a new one from the resulting free space. Then
format and proceed with installation.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

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

Babs Anthony

I agree. Why go thru all of that mess to downgrade and all he needed to do
was upgrade to Sonar 7. Maybe he could not afford the cost of an upgrade.
 

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