from vista to xp.

[colypse]

i need some help to get my laptop from vista to xp. ive got two partitions; one on 7gb, other on 140gb.

the first one is a HP-recovery kind of thing, and the other is vista and all my games and files.

can anybody help me or give me links on how to change vista to xp without all of my files is deleted?

please help.

[burnik]

for me..
backup it up.. then reformat nyhahaha

[rainbowdemon]

for me..
backup it up.. then reformat nyhahaha


That's what I'd do too!!

[HelenaP]

So would I.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Sorry guy, youre gonna have to save those files if youre going to format your drive with a new OS like XP. I think youre doing the right thing BTW, Vista on a laptop must be shitty. Isnt there some kinda new Vista lite for laptops coming out someday?


Also, are your games going to need DirectX10 or are they older games? depending on your answer you may or may not want to lose Vista.

[ratcat]

Vista loves R.A.M.

Giving it more juice in this sector and piss off what backgound processes you didn't need and this could help you.

The link below is apart of a ZP thread Vista Sucks! (http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=47536&highlight=vista+sucks). And on page 4 friendly advice.

Consult Krell's trusted friends (http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=533196&postcount=46)


This may save you from lot of trouble of converting.

Btw, what level of vista is it.


.

[colypse]

well, ive got vista home premium, and with a sucky gf8400gs M, it sucks up much ram even if i upgraded from 2 to 4gb ram now, it says in system, that ive only got 2815 even that i put in two 2gb ram's. ive tweaked all i could with turning off components witch take up memory like aero, but i heard that xp is coming with a sp3? and it would be 10% faster then vista? im not saying vista sucks, after you have taken down everything there is to disable and so forth. i just wondered if i would really feel the difference in performance if i go for xp? and i think im running directX10, wont that work on xp? like SoulStorm Warhammer 40K..

[tokoloshe]

You could also make a dual boot... Vista is installed on your main HD, so you could just format the recovery one (MAKE THE RECOVERY DISKS SO YOU CAN ALWAYS RESET TO FACTORY CONDITION!!!!), and install XP on the smaller partition and have a dual boot.. That way you still have access to all your stuff without the rigmarol of backing up and what not. Then you can see if your system improves with XP. I did the same thing on my HP laptop, except I went from official XP SP2 Media center to TinyXP, and the performance difference was very noticeable, so then I made the decision to format the whole computer and put Tiny XP as the only OS.

NOTE: If you ever do decide to format the whole thing, go to HP website and download all the drivers for your motherboard, BIOS, CPU, gfx, sound, modem, wireless, EVERYTHING> it will make the re-installation MUCH easier.

Good luck and have fun....

PS- no matter what you do it is always a good idea to keep your ppprrreeeeeciousssssssssss files backed up, since if you don't then you literally have all your eggs in one basket!!!! Get yourself an external 250GB HD they are practically giving them away these days and use it as your main preciousssss saver!!!!

[colypse]

thanx man:) i just found out that this f**** vista 32bit doesnt support more than 3gb ram, so i have to get xp 64bit to be able to use my 4gb. that sucks, and my gfx is 8400gs m, so its kind of a give away that too, i love this laptop with 17" hd and hd speakers, so i will get me one of those extern hd's and do this:)

would also mention that me and a friend tried today and partition the hd so that we could shrink the one with vista on it and then move my presssiouss files to another, but this could not be done with partition magic or the crap program in administrative tools crap that came with vista.

[tokoloshe]

Wierd I am running vista home premium 32bit, and it registers my 3.5 GB of ram and my 8500GT with 1GB dedicated ram too. Vista allocates extra RAM to gfx, so when I run dxdiag it says total maximum video ram is 2.5 GB. So I can't understand why your system won't register the RAM, you should always check that it is in properly....

Also partition magic is just about the best thing out there for partitioning windows drives, again I can't figure out what could be wrong... maybe give a few more details about why you couldn't partition the drive and maybe I/we can help....

[thepuzzler]

Im pretty sure partition magic is XP only. try a live linux disk and use gparted if all else fails.

I've just had to pretty much to the same thing as the op this week and realised just how little HP cares about xp driver support for their Vista laptops. (Still can't get my wifi / LAN working with XP)

Long story short Ubuntu is now my main OS, with xp (sans wifi) sitting in the old HP recovery partition.

[colypse]

well, if i try anything with that shrinking tool that came with vista it just says that its not enough space? maybe that recovery partition makes it unable to expand? im going to try the avanquest partition commander 10, cus it says its supported by vista..

[tokoloshe]

Wow check me with egg on my face... I decided that even though I have become used to Vista and like some of the new features, I wanted to dual boot XP so that I oculd really see how it runs on my new machine, and have some software that isn't compatible with vista yet (yes yes games games!)

NIGHTMARE!!!!!

Damn HP comes with vista preloaded, and when I install XP it overrites the BCD, so I can't boot into vista anymore, but there are some freeware programs that fix this and I finally get dual boot.

But now I don't know how to find drivers for my shit. I have 6 entries in the device manager on XP that are uninstalled and have no drivers. One of them is responsible for my internet connection since I have no option except 1394 in my networks manager.... So no internet.... I have no idea how to find out what these devices do and where to find drivers for them once I figure out what they are. Of course HP released the machine as a vista machine so they only have vista drivers for this machine so I am shit outta luck as far as system manufacturer goes...

So I apologise to all above for sounding like it was so easy, I didn't realise that vista and dual boot was a completely different kettle of fish!!!

Anyone got any ideas about my driver problem???? Has any amazing genius just gone and created like a self install driver pack with options to detect and automatically install the best drivers for your hardware (besides M$!!!!)

Thanks

[napho]

There's a program called versiontracker pro that might do what you want.


Detect and correct out-of-date drivers and software automatically. VersionTracker Pro alerts you immediately when updates are available.


http://www.versiontracker.com/windows/

[tokoloshe]

Need an internet connection for version tracker to work...

Plus it is scanning and tracking my vista drivers...