I Hate Vista

Go buy a Retail copy of XP. Install, Download drivers from Dell Support, and compute away.

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@LeahcimAz wrote:
Go buy a Retail copy of XP. Install, Download drivers from Dell Support, and compute away.

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Better hurry though. Microsoft discontinues selling Windows XP officially June 30, 2008.

I have a couple of copies of windows 98 se kicking around so could I get away with an upgrade copy of XP home sp2 rather than a full retail which is vastly overpriced.

 

If I format the HDD to install XP instead of  Vista what happens to my warranty?

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@Maturecheese wrote:

I have a couple of copies of windows 98 se kicking around so could I get away with an upgrade copy of XP home sp2 rather than a full retail which is vastly overpriced.

 

If I format the HDD to install XP instead of  Vista what happens to my warranty?

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I am not sure about the warranty. You might want to contact Dell support with this question. I also am not sure about the Dell XP drivers for your system. On other brand systems, you could indeed, run the Windows XP Home upgrade setup and at some point in the install process, you would be asked to insert the original earlier OS version disk in the CD\Rom drive to verify that the system is qualified for the Winows XP Home version upgrade. After the verification, the setup would continue normally. The only question that comes to mind is the issue of loading the Dell motherboard chipset drivers. The XP upgrade disk will not have these drivers, so the hard drive will not be recogonized and the setup will fail. Others have slipstremed these drivers into the OS and installed without any issues. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the help esp Boyd.  Whatever the problems I really don't have a lot of choice as Vista is not a lot of good to me:smileysad:.  I had better swot up on slipstreaming:smileysad:.

 

As an after thought could I load the xp chipset drivers on to a USB stick and then load them before xp by using the bios to set the boot priority?  Probably not as an OS is probably needed.

If you answer my Question you may not have to buy an upgrade disk.

Cheers for the suggestion but your right I live in RIPOFF BRITAIN.  Sorry to shout but it really gets on my goat what retailers get away with here.

Leahcimaz I can get an upgrade xp Home sp2 for £87 on Amazon.  I already own an upgrade copy without sp2 but its on my other pc and I want to keep it on that

 

Boyd is this what you were refering to re slpistreaming? 

 

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

 

 

The only prob I see with this procedure is that It is normally pretty impossible to copy windows XP on to another disc.  Isn't there built in copy protection?

I can certainly understand the "Vista" issue. I used Vista from the early days of beta testing, but when it went RTM, I chose not to use it. I still had it on a test system to use when people called for help on their newly acquired Vista system. I only stsrted using it as my primary system when I purchased the Dell XPS 420 with Vista pre-installed. I had to tweak it a great deal, in order to get it to the point I was comfortable with it. I do have some propriatary surveilence software that will only run on XP that I use on the other system. This may be your situation also. However, if you get into Vista and tweak all the permission distractions, you would find Vista to be acceptable I am sure. It does take some getting use to though. Good luck on your converting to XP.

What I was going to suggest was to buy a computer from Dell Auction for around $100.00 that comes with Windows XP Pro, use the Dell XP Disk that comes with the computer and then unload the computer. You would wind up with XP Pro for all most nothing, But I now see that your in the UK (?) so that probably would not work for you.

 

Mike

That is indeed, the instructions and a link to the program that you need to get the task achieved. Windows XP disk are not prevented from being copied. The only thing that should be of concern is that you will need a new original copy with a Product Key that has not been activated and follow the instructions. I highlighted the linked page instructions you provided, not the entire page, just the instructions, including the photographs, and copied and pasted them into a MS Word document and then saved the document for future referral purposes since I can't seem to remember all this any longer. You could print these out if needed. But with these instructions, and an unactivated copy of Windows XP Home upgrade, you should be good to go. Hope this helps.

 

EDIT: By the way, I love the name of your hometown.

OK good but my only worry is that when I use a new copy of xp upgrade and try to activate it Microsoft will know its a Dell machine and be aware that it used to have Vista on it and not allow activation. At £87 (@ $175) for a new upgrade copy it is a bit of a gamble.  The trouble is in the UK its @ £170 for a full retail copy.  Thats around $330

 

 

also wouldn't I need to slipstream the sata drivers not the chipset drivers or maybe both? 

I understand your very real concern. But this will not be a problem. First, you will be reformatting the hard drive which would erase all the data on the drive. No Vista data or any other data would be on the drive. Secondly, Microsoft does not care if it is a Dell system that you are installing Windows XP on. Third, If all goes well, and the install succeeds, as I expect it to, and you go online to activate your legally purchased copy of Windows XP Home upgrade, and the activation fails, as it does even with legal copies as yours will be, you then can call a Microsoft toll free telephone number and speak to a representative and explain what you have done and the representative will ask you for some numbers (they will show you where to locate the numbers) and then give you another set of numbers for you to enter on your system, and it will be legally activated. Before attempting to do the downgrade from Vista, please perform any backups of any data that you may need later, like documents, photos, dowloaded files, etc., because all the data will be deleted when  XP is installed. I understand your concern. We are not talking a small amout of money here. Hope this helps.

 

Edit: I forgot to answer your question about the drivers. Included in the chipset drivers, I beleive, are the SATA drivers. But to be safe, I would slipstream all the drivers I could from the Dell web site for your system that deals with XP. As in some of the driver downloads, I found that the SATA drivers were embedded in the Intel Chipset Driver Utility. It was an executable file so you could not see the individual driver files. XP cannot locate these drivers from  within the executable file so I extracted the files and it created a folder on the C:\ drive listed as C:\dell\Drivers and in the XP folder were the SATA drivers. You can then just copy the SATA drivers files to anywhere you prefer. Hope this helps.

thank you all ,I will get on the case in the next couple of days:smileyhappy:  In a week or two I will update this post.