Downgrade from Vista to XP on HP
Hi, I am writing after a long time and that too because of a request by a friend. Off late I have been asked questions on how to downgrade from Vista to XP because Microsoft has produced such a marvel of an OS that people just can’t handle it at this time.
About the downgrade, I haven’t tried it myself!!! Actually my sister bought an HP-vista laptop and I used it for 2 days and 3rd day I somehow got used to it. Still XP is XP and people like me still prefer their old laptops with 1gb ram against new ones with 3 GB coz we are still better with XP. Though vista isn’t that bad, some suggestions to try before chucking it:
- Stop the User Control feature. For me it bugged me a lot and interfered with my natural speed and flow of work coz it asks permissions even for basic features like copying sometimes.
- Stop all unnecessary programs. These days all laptops come with a whole lot of preinstalled softies which are basically useless. I’d recommend of going to program manager and uninstalling any program you feel you have never used and never will. Also run msconfig utility and stop all useless startup services and applications.
Now if you still are fed up with vista, then let’s go for it. I would still say to refrain, coz I myself have not done this, and also coz some of my friends have had some pretty bad experiences with it.
STEP I:-
Make a recovery disc and keep it safe in case you screw something up, you will need it.
Also go to HP support and download all drivers under your model but under XP. An e.g. of drivers for dv9507tx is
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3446847.
Step II:-
Supposedly Vista comes with native SATA hard drive support, and XP doesn’t. To fix this:
On boot up, enter the BIOS and disable native SATA support. WinXP will be able to read the hard drive. You can run WinXP with it disabled now.
However, to use SATA support, you will need your hard drive’s controller driver. The driver must be made into the Windows XP installation disk, so you will need to rip, edit, and burn the installation disc. For instructions on how to do this, seehttp://www.powerdonkey.net/windows/x…ver_update.php
Step III:-
Install XP pro
Step IV:-
Start XP and Click Control Panel > Add New Hardware
- This should tell you what hardware needs drivers
Use your recovery disc to search for and install drivers
For each driver that won’t install, try the ones you downloaded
Your XP installation should be working
