How do I switch to XP from Vista?

I have an HP Pavilion a1700n with the following specs:



3800 AMD 64X2 dual core processor

250GB hard drive

Nvidia 6150LE GEforce graphics card

4gb of memory



Running Vista Home premium.



I am going to purchase XP. Which version of XP would be best for me? I use the computer solely to surf the net and play some old school video games.



Also when I spoke to HP today they said that XP might not work with my computer. They said I would be able to download drivers that are compatible with XP for things like my video card etc, but that my motherboard might not have any XP compatible drivers available. Does this sound right?



Lastly I have a drivewash program. Should I drivewash the whole harddrive & the backup partition before I install XP?



This whole experience has been a nightmare to say the least. I've gone through every trouble shooting step known, and every person that comes to look at it says they problems are just because of Vista. So that's why I'm switching.

Before wiping the original installation preinstalled by HP verify that XP drivers are even available first. If located try tossing XP on a spare first if you have one onhand to see how it will run for a few days. Yes that will take some time to only find that the system may be too new hardware wise seeing no XP support mainly the board itself.

Perhaps a better description of the problems being seen would be the first thing to see looked over better first before voiding the warranty unless seeing the dealer replace Vista with XP for you. tossing a second drive in to dual boot is another option. I was running XP Home and Pro along with Vista since it came out on the last build here.

For XP there actually four versions seeing Home, Professional, Proffessional 64bit, and the Media Center Edition of Professional. The last two came out in 2005. I would avoid the 64bit edition there since suffered greatly for the lack of driver support while the 64bit versions of Vista now are finally seeing that.

The Home edition was more multimedia geared while some preferred the Pro version there. MCE was the multimedia upgrade for the Pro edition there with the new Media Center seen first there and now in Vista.

I wonder why do you want to switch to XP? I would rather run Vista instead of XP with such characteristics of your PC. I think you should investigate your Vista to get rid of your problem. I think your Vista is not a source of the problem.

Good Grief! Want to talk about "old school" type games on Vista? How about running an old 8bit MSDos game on Vista and hearing it in 5.1 surround instead of the board's own speaker?


That was a screen shot of the sequel to the original Duke Nukem namely Nukem2 seen there. Courtesy of DOSBox of course! Try that along with Soldier of Fortune I+II, Return to CastleWolfenstein, and some other older games to see if they would run. They actually see fewer game crashes!

you can't load xp after vista installation. you will have to 1st install xp then vista. and u could find drivers for your display. Windows Xp pro, or Media Center adition would be best for your gaming and Internet surfing......

XP Home works as well as for both if you have that edition. I ran both Home and Pro along with Vista on the last build. For multimedia the Home and MCE editions are good there.