vista home premium to XP Pro

[Allenjamieson]

Hi
i have a new laptop with vista home premium, and activated it yesterday, but
i really dont like vista, am i able to use the same licence and downgrade to
XP Pro?

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

No. See the following:

Windows Vista Downgrade Rights Explained:
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...cbd-699b0c164182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hi
i have a new laptop with vista home premium, and activated it yesterday, but
i really dont like vista, am i able to use the same licence and downgrade to
XP Pro?

 

[Malke]

Hi
i have a new laptop with vista home premium, and activated it yesterday,
but i really dont like vista, am i able to use the same licence and
downgrade to XP Pro?

General information about replacing Vista with XP:

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. Some OEMs still offer XP as an option on business-class
machines.

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

Malke

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Hi
i have a new laptop with vista home premium, and activated it yesterday,
but
i really dont like vista, am i able to use the same licence and downgrade
to
XP Pro?

Before attempting to change to XP, tell us what you do not like about Vista,
and we will try to help you get around your problems with it..



--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:17:01 -0700, Allenjamieson <my email

i have a new laptop with vista home premium, and activated it yesterday, but
i really dont like vista, am i able to use the same licence and downgrade to
XP Pro?

No.

Moreover one day's experience with a new operating system (or with
almost anything new) is nowhere near long enough to make an
intelligent decision as to whether you like it or not. Of course Vista
feels different from XP, and of course you are more comfortable with
what is old and familiar. It takes time to learn and become accustomed
to anything new.

I strongly recommend that you be fair to both yourself and Vista and
give yourself a couple of months of use and learning before deciding
you want to go back to XP.

 

[Allenjamieson]

Hi mike

basically vista is a bit of a resource hog, also i didnt notice that vista
home premium dosent have any support for adding it to a domain,

i do have a machine on XP pro, can i swap licences over and have vista on
the pc and xp pro on the laptop?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:58:01 -0700, Allenjamieson <my email

Hi mike

basically vista is a bit of a resource hog, also i didnt notice that vista
home premium dosent have any support for adding it to a domain,

Just like XP. XP Home doesn't support joining a domain either.

i do have a machine on XP pro, can i swap licences over and have vista on
the pc and xp pro on the laptop?

Probably not. You can only if they are *both* retail copies, not OEM
(for example, if the computer came with Windows pre-installed, it's
OEM) *and* drivers for the other operating system exist. At least the
laptop probably came with Windows installed, and on the laptop in
particular, you are likely to run into the driver problem.

 

[Phillips]

Don't bother, Vista is better than XP. By necessity (battery, that is) most
notebooks have poor graphics, audio, slow hard-drive. Just turn off some of
the eye candy and it'll speed up (or appear to) quite a bit - or try to run
without Aero and see the difference.
Michael

 

[+Bob+]

I strongly recommend that you be fair to both yourself and Vista and
give yourself a couple of months of use and learning before deciding
you want to go back to XP.

Vista sucks out of the box as well as a couple of months later.
There's no way that it's an improvement over XP.

 

[+Bob+]

General information about replacing Vista with XP:

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.

If there are no XP drivers, you may still be able to install by
hunting them down at the manufacturers site (e.g. if you have an ATI
video card, you can probably find drivers). It's not for the squeamish
though.

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.

If it doesn't run, you can always reload from the system restore disk.
I don't see how it would be possible for software to cause a hardware
problem. Unless you flash the BIOS, I don't see any potential issues.

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.

Definitely!

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. Some OEMs still offer XP as an option on business-class
machines.

Only Dell AFAIK. You now pay for the luxury.

 

[+Bob+]

Only Dell AFAIK. You now pay for the luxury.

Correcting myself: It appears that HP also offers the XP downgrade
option, but only on "business class" machines like Dell (note that
business class does not necessarily mean that they are more expensive.
Levano is also offering a downgrade.

On the license issue, VIsta does have a downgrade option that
apparently licenses you - however, doing this yourself on a practical
basis without a retail CD would be difficult. I haven't read the
clause specifically looking for any limitations.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Vista sucks out of the box as well as a couple of months later.
There's no way that it's an improvement over XP.

Your opinion is noted. I still recommend to Allenjamieson that he take
the time to learn it and make up his own mind. Nobody else's opinion,
neither yours nor mine, should matter to him.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

IMHO, MS did this to themselves with Vista. The first one I tried was a new
Laptop a co worker bought from Dell right after Vista hit. It was a POS. It
took forever to get it set up, it was so slow I often thought it had frozen.
Problem was it had 512 Megs of RAM, because MS told everyone Vista needed
512.

Microsoft has always cited the *minimum* configuration need to operate
their operating systems. That's very different from what's recommended
to run it acceptably. There is nothing new in this respect with Vista.

They IMHO, would have been far better off to just tell people the truth
right from the start. Tell them "if you try it with 512 it will run VERY
poorly".

Although information on recommended amounts of RAM has always been
available too, I agree that they could have done a much better job of
making that clear.

But again, there's nothing new here, exactly the same was true of
Windows XP, and of other Windows versions before it.