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Installing XP Painlessly?

Diesel Dually

Diesel Dually

awaiting your return...signed... your friends
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I freaking HATE Vista...but am 'lucky' enough to have XP professional (the whole thing. I want to install it on my Sony Vaio laptop. Anyone here able to walk me through it so it boots only XP...and mebbe remove Vista?

Thanks.
 
Man, I really feel for you. :sad:

You might try to find someone with a similar Sony Vaio running on Windows XP and borrow their Windows Install Disk. Then upgrade to your own copy of Windows XP after you get it running with the OEM software. But you may need to contact Sony and see if you can get the drivers for running your Vaio laptop on Windows XP.

Even though Microsoft says that you can legally downgrade your operating system, many have tried and failed. Manufacturers have been discouraged by Microsoft from writing the required drivers to run the disk drives, video cards, sound cards, etc. on the new computers with Windows XP. Without a committed assistance from the computer manufacturer to make the necessary XP drivers available so that XP will run correctly, you'll probably be SOL.

Microsoft has decided that they will no longer allow OEM sales of Windows XP after June 30, 2008 unless the computer is one of those Ultra Low-Cost PCs which will be allowed to be sold with a stripped down version of Windows XP Home Edition until June 30, 2010.

As far as I have been able to determine, Dell is about the only major manufacturer that still builds some of their computers with Windows XP Home and XP Professional. This is the reason I just purchased two new computers from Dell (a new desktop and a new laptop).

BTW - I spoke with Microsoft yesterday and they confirmed that the Direct OEM and Retail License Availability end date is June 30, 2008 and the System Builder License Availability end date is January 1, 2009.

See Here (scroll down to License Availability Roadmap)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

Windows Vista is JUNK and most large corporations are refusing to run it in their networks. It is a nightmare to use it in any kind of network, especially small home-office networks that do not have large IT staff to support their PCs. One of the PC publications recently uncovered several internal Microsoft memos stating that Vista was NOT ready for public release, but Gates went ahead with it anyways.

Sales of Windows Vista are way below Microsoft's expectations. So they are going to fix it by pulling Windows XP from the market. :(

Let us know how you come out.
 
Screwed again by Bill Gates...I wonder how hard Linux is to use then...;) But I bet I would be SOL on that too...

Ray...I agree about Vista on the home network...I have 4 Laptops (3 with Vista) trying to talk to an XP Desktop hub...talk about screwed...unless I 'upgrade' the desktop to Vista...I suppose I will have to wait for the next 'incarnation' Windows.

What sucks most about this is I had the Vaio in the shop last week for a fan issue, and the tech called me @ home and told me there was a problem with my OS...so he had to re-image my hard drive. Thank God I backed up all my files...I have irreplacable teaching resources for Fire Service Hydraulics and Driver Operator I had to build out by scratch on Power point years ago...do not want to do that again! But back to the point...when I was speaking to the tech I asked him to install XP, and he told me that my machine was not licensed for XP...so I suppose that there is no XP drivers for my Vaio at any rate...

Thanks for the help bro!
 
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And to follow-up on that, Sony really sucks when it comes to supporting people that are doing re-installs... they are simply NOT helpful at all. They are, however, more than willing to sell you new install discs for your Vista :)

I agree with Ray's idea... install somebody else's Sony vaio XP (if you can find one) and then upgrade the drivers, one at a time. It's painful.

I love Vaio laptops.. I have 2 of them (older ones, though... which likely won't help you much). When I wanted to get XP off of my FX-340 (don't ask... ram problems, can't buy PC100 cl2 dimms, etc) I wanted to put ME on it (from my old one). I had to swap hard drives to make that work, 'cause the re-install is keyed to specific machine configurations.

Post up what you got, maybe somebody here has something that could help you.
 
Chris, you may want to get a portable hard drive and back up all your data to that. Then you may be able to copy it to the office desktop. Portable hard drives are quite inexpensive now.

I know a guy who had bought a new laptop with Vista and was not able to get it to work with his office network. He had his tech guy install XP Pro and it was a total disaster. They finally re-installed Vista and ended up giving the computer to a friend. He then ordered a new Dell laptop with XP Pro and solved his problem.

I have ten computers on my office network (5 laptops and 5 desktops) all running Windows XP Professional. Some are hardwired and others log on via wireless. They can ALL transfer files between them seamlessly and all can access the internet though my router via a cable modem.

I am trying my damnest to stay away from Vista as long as possible.

My solution for my aging laptop was to buy a new one from Dell. But if that's what you want, you have to act soon, 'cause they won't be able to sell XP after June 30th and they have a full pipeline.

Good luck!
 
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Got mine from Dell last week, Vista "downgraded" to XP pro. They told me I could order until September and still get that option... My software maker will not support vista until 2010 :eek6:
 
I would look on sony's site and see if you can find all the drivers for that laptop or one very similar.. Put them on a cd. Then format the HD, not sure how that will work on the laptop. Usually you can make a computer boot off the XP cd and then tell it to format the HD and do a fresh install. If not there's always stuff like the western digital HD tools for that, or partition magic would kill it if you could stick the HD in another computer to do it. Just find a way to format the bastard to totally remove vista, then a clean install of XP, and hope the drivers you put on the cd are the right ones. Or if it has an oem thing that stops you formatting the HD throw it away and buy another HD, start fresh with it.
 
The trick is to find somebody that has a similar VAIO running XP. Swap your HD into their machine, install the XP using their recovery disks, then put the HD back into your machine and chase driver issues.

Failing that, you can always start from scratch on a fresh XP install and do the Wrong-Driver Boogie until you can at least get internet and hunt up the right ones.

Shouldn't be too bad.
 
I did a similar thing with my Toshiba notebook. I went to the Toshiba site and downloaded all the XP drivers for my model and stuck them on a USB stick. Getting the correct drivers was not easy to decipher, but persistence paid off.
 
I just bought a new Dell a few days ago, couldn't get XP, so I got Vista. What a nightmare. network issues on my network are not bad as I use a third party software to maintain it, I just wished Linkys and Dlink would offer better Routers
 
im sure glad i got my gateway just as vista come out and just got a coupon to get vista[which i never used]
 
RayMich said:
Chris, you may want to get a portable hard drive and back up all your data to that. Then you may be able to copy it to the office desktop. Portable hard drives are quite inexpensive now.

I know a guy who had bought a new laptop with Vista and was not able to get it to work with his office network. He had his tech guy install XP Pro and it was a total disaster. They finally re-installed Vista and ended up giving the computer to a friend. He then ordered a new Dell laptop with XP Pro and solved his problem.

I have ten computers on my office network (5 laptops and 5 desktops) all running Windows XP Professional. Some are hardwired and others log on via wireless. They can ALL transfer files between them seamlessly and all can access the internet though my router via a cable modem.

I am trying my damnest to stay away from Vista as long as possible.

My solution for my aging laptop was to buy a new one from Dell. But if that's what you want, you have to act soon, 'cause they won't be able to sell XP after June 30th and they have a full pipeline.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Back up all the important data on Carbonite and buy a MAc and run Windows Xp on the Mac.

:thumbsup:
 
My laptop was vista, and I tried to like it, but it finally pissed me off enough to perform a vista-ectomy. I used the XP install disk from my brother-in-laws gateway laptop and it wiped vista completly out and installed XP. I also got all that preloaded crap that gateway loads, (AOL, etc) but that was easy and painless to remove.

Now heres the kicker... XP has a copy protection scheme that makes a "snapshot" of certain components on the computer (Hard drive, video adaptor,ect) and generates a discreet number that will only work on THAT computer. If you install it on another, the numbers dont match up and you get an activation error.

You get 30 days to activate XP, but when you try to, XP says its already activated. After 30 days, when you log in, it boots you right back out. BUT! there is a work around. I found a utility that claims to activate any windows product. I dunno about that, but it did the job on my XP conversion.

This utilty probably violates every copyright law, so I wont post it here. But if a fella drops me a PM, I might just accidentally send him something I shouldnt have in the first place...;):arf:

The change over is simple. Insert the xp disc, and boot up. it will ask you to press enter to boot from CD. depending on a the version, it will ask you something along the lines of Repair or reinstall, or whatever. The choice that formats the drive and installs is the one you want. You know you are on the right track when it asks you like 4 times are you sure and warn you that you are about do erase everything. Its really helpfull if you have the drivers for all your stuff, Video, sound, dvdrom and whatnot, ready to go. I have a CD with all my drivers preloaded onto if if I ever need to rebuild.

Takes about half an hour to an hour to do the rebuild. PM me if you need help.


Tim
 
You can create a new partition on your HD and install XP on that partition but you will need to down load all the drivers from Sony to a disc and insert that when you are asked by the XP installation process for the drivers. Then move all your data files over to the new HD partition (make sure you have enough room for them when you create your partition) and delete leave both OS on the HD till you are complete and decied if you want to delete vista -

If you have multiple HDs that aren't part of a RAID aray, you can just move verything to the one that has the Vista OS, and install XP on the other - it should give you the option of which OS you want to boot when you start up.
 
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