Vista- Downgrade Possible Later??

[TheGeek]

I have a question regarding Vista. I would like to try it out, but later i may need to go back to XP for software compatibility. I was wondering if that's possible. I have a pretty crappy laptop with it installed, but it runs like ***t, but when i tried to reinstall XP on that computer, i could never get it to install. I dont know if the dvd drive is broken, or if Vista somehow encrypts the hard drive to make it unreadable (this was suggested by my dad). Also, my current new laptop is an HP, so there is a 6GB partition on it that has all the recovery data. This kinda relates to the first question, but if I were to install vista on the current partition that XP is on, would the recovery partition remain untouched/still able to restore the computer to XP? I know this is a confusing post, but thats liable to happen at 3 in the morning. any help would be great.

 

[TG2]

vista changes the boot section thing XP uses, so to get rid of the Vista and back to XP, youd have to run /fixmbr, but thats run from the XP CD, and you dont have that, running the restore from the restore partition...Im not sur eif thatll fix the MBR record and restore the partition

 

[Red Squirrel]

Install it in a VM or a test box, not on your main machine.

 

[corkyg]

And, if you have a spare HDD lying around, that would make a good "mule" drive for Vista.

 

[maluckey]

I just finished downgrading from Vista pre-RC-1 5536 (The latest iteration). I can say that I was moderately impressed. It (Vista) even loaded drivers for my Broadcom Wireless NIC! The included video drivers are the ONLY ones supported, so no overclocking of the vid-card (at least for nVidia).

I already had Windows Media11 and IE7 Beta3, so Vista was not too different than what I had. BTW Aero sucks as bad as Luna.

Re-installing XP was not too difficult. I had a running Win 98SE still around, so was able to use fdisk as well as format to delete the partition and clear the MBR.

I ended up going to 2GB of RAM w/Vista. I was hitting over 1gb RAM used during gaming with CIV4 and even with UT2004. I could feel/see it swapping to disk. Just idling, after turning off everthing unnecessary left me with 365MB RAM committed.

In short, downgrade is doable, but NOT without clearing MBR and reformatting.

 

[TheGeek]

well i have recovery disks for my computer. so if i can clear the MBR, i should be able to install vista fine?

 

[TheGeek]

another question. how can i clear the mbr if i dont have an actual xp disk?

 

[TG2]

You cant, you need the CD

 

[TheGeek]

I have an XP disk. So if i need to downgrade, i can just pop in the disk, press r, and then type fixmbr. and yeah. right?

 

[pcgeek11]

Image your current partition.
Install Vista...
Use it.
To " downgrade " back to XP restore the image you made... done.

pcgeek