Removing Vista - Please Help

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wthorpe

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I have an HP Pavilion s7700y Slimline. It has Windows Vista on it, which I want to remove and replace with XP. So far, I have backed up all of its hard drive onto an external HD. Booted to an XP OS disk and selected to "Repair" any existing installations of Windows. To which, when brought to the C:\ prompt, I typed "Fixboot C:" With that, I got that the command wasn't recognized or that C: was a removable drive. The same when I typed "Fixmbr C:". I then booted it to a bootable disk and typed "Format C:" and didn't get the desired results there either. I wasn't allowed to load XP over Vista either. Can't format the C: (where Vista resides) while operating inside of Vista. Fdisk didn't work. How can I get that crazy operating system off my computer so I can put something that makes sense on there?

Definitely appreciate any help you can offer me on this one.
 
Thank you Lopdog. After reading that link you sent me, it doesn't look like I will be able to uninstall Vista on my client's PCs due to the version that they have. I tried doing the "clean install" that you suggested, but I got Window's blue screen everytime. Thank you very much for your response.
 
When did the blue screen appear? A clean installation should work on any computer, regardless off the previous operating system, as long as you format the hdd completely first. But maybe HP have some kind of protection, I've heard about people having problems changing the default operating systems on HP computers.
 
Yes sir. HP seems to be locked down like Fort Knox. Also, I think my client may be using Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium, in which case, if they are, according to the link you provided, they are "SOL".
 
It might be just as well. Unless HP offers motherboard drivers compatible with XP, you won't really have a functioning PC anyway.
 
Hey all,

Supposedly, I can create a floppy by hitting F6 during the beginning of installation from the XP disc when I boot from it, and create a floppy disc of my SATA Controller drivers so that first, my C: will get recognized and I can continue formatting the drive, deleting/creating partitions as necessary, and getting on with the install.
 
Vista comes with native SATA hard drive support, and XP doesn't.

I found this at http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-39254-changing-vista-to-xp-pro and also a description on how to add SATA hard drive support to your original XP cd. It's not exactly your model, but it may give you some ideas.

To make this work you need to stream the SATA driver for your laptop into your original Xp disc, (not as difficult as it sounds).

First download the SATA driver you need from the manufacturer of your laptop.

Then you download a free program called nLite that does the streaming for you with a couple of clicks of the mouse button, (this program is so user friendly a kid could use it).

It copies your original Xp disc, then you add the SATA driver, the program streams the driver into the copy and then you burn a new Xp installation disc.

Format the entire drive, including the Vista backup (if you don't do this you'll get blue screen problems, as the vista backup will interfere with the Xp OS).

After this it's a doddle to do a "Clean" Xp install using your new disc.

After installation don't forget to update all the Xp drivers for your hardware, again these will be available from the manufacturer.

But it seems like mailpup is right, you may have some trouble finding drivers, some people have reported problems with sound and wireless.

Why not wait for Windows 7, it's almost right around the corner (I hope so), and it's supposed to be much better than Vista even now.
 
depending on the computer... there may be other hardware issues when downgrading to XP... a lot of newer hardware isn't being developed for XP at all, so a lot of them won't have drivers that will support XP... It's best to just go ahead and go with Vista, or wait about a month or so and upgrade to windows 7... it should be coming out very soon.
 
Supposedly, I can create a floppy by hitting F6 during the beginning of installation from the XP disc when I boot from it, and create a floppy disc of my SATA Controller drivers so that first, my C: will get recognized and I can continue formatting the drive, deleting/creating partitions as necessary, and getting on with the install.
You've been misinformed. When you hit F6 during Windows Setup, you are supposed to have the SATA controller drivers already on a floppy disk ready to install. It doesn't create one.

The main problem is if SATA controller drivers even exist for your application. Then you still need motherboard chipset drivers. They are either offered by HP or they are not.
 
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