Vista downto XP Pro

[jimrx4]

Has anyone successfully downgraded from Vista(Ult) down to XP Pro on a
system with serial drives only and no floppy drive? Boy, am I having
problems. I've got a Gateway 5478 which is good enough for Vista, but XP was
much more reliable for my needs. I've got the serial drivers for XP Pro and
the controller card driver but XP blue-screens on installation, stops dead
and says it's going to shut down due to incompatible hardware. Do I read
into that that due to the nature and bios of my computer I won't ever be
able to install XP (at least on this machine)? Maybe when XP Pro SP3 is
released I'll then be able to boot. (I can install Vista Home Premium and
Vista Ultimate with no problems.

 

[DL]

Did you try creating a slipstreamed winxp installation containing the raid
controler drivers?

 

[Peter Foldes]

Are you installing after a clean reformat or are you trying to downgrade using the XP installation CD while Vista is still installed.

You need to do a clean install of XP after removing Vista

 

[jimrx4]

I've slipstreamed orig. XP Pro with SP2 and using nLite incorporated the
iaStor drivers into the slipstreamed disk. No luck. Reboot with the newly
created disk, got to the screen that says at the bottom, Windows will now
start (or restart) and boom - blue screen with message mentioned in my
original post.

 

[jimrx4]

Interesting, I never thought of reformatting the serial drives first. I
thought that when I rebooted with the XP Pro slipstreamed disk I would
reformat then. But since I never could get to that screen I could not do
what one would call "a clean install." Maybe I'll format the disks first and
then try it. Thanks for the suggestion. Nothing gained or lest in this
scenario since I have a mirror image of my Vista/Ult (using True Image).



Are you installing after a clean reformat or are you trying to downgrade
using the XP installation CD while Vista is still installed.

You need to do a clean install of XP after removing Vista