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General discussion

Removing Windows Vista Home Premium

by ledispatch Mar 12, 2007 2:02AM PDT

I am wanting to remove Windows Vista off of my lap top. I have a Toshiba A135-S4427. I want to do an install of Windows XP. Anyone have the steps necessary to do this?

Thanks!

Eli

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Here's a guide...
by John.Wilkinson Mar 12, 2007 5:04AM PDT

You can click here for a guide to performing a clean installation of Windows XP. Just keep in mind that you'll lose any files and installed software in the process, so backup anything you wish to keep first. Also, before you wipe and start fresh with XP be sure you burn a set of recovery CDs/DVDs so that you can reinstall Vista at a later time if you so decide. (Look for an option provided by the manufacturer in the Start menu.)

John

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John, Thank you...
by ledispatch Mar 12, 2007 9:28AM PDT

for your assistance. I will try this this evening.

Eli

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I feel your pain
by fpowl Mar 15, 2007 1:14AM PDT

I, too, recently purchased a Toshiba notebook (A135 Satellite, model S4407). As bad luck would have it, the computer came with Vista home premium installed. I took an instant dislike to Vista and decided to remove Vista and install a registered, legal, paid-for, full copy of XP Pro that I have. No go. A Toshiba "support" person with an unlikely first name and terrific English said it couldn't be done. I took the computer to an authorized Toshiba repair place and offered to pay them to remove Vista and install my XP. They tried and tried and said it couldn't be done.

Does this mean that Micros**t owns Toshiba? That Bill Gates dictates what's inside a Toshiba computer? That Toshiba *lets* him to it?

Here's one option I haven't tried; if anybody has used it, I'd appreciate hearing: Shrink the existing (Vista) partition down to a minimum, reformat the remaining partition, try to install XP on it, then remove the "Vista" partition. It sounds like trouble, and I don't want to try it unless I have to.

Any reports of successful upgrading of a computer with Vista home premium installed back to a full XP installation would be very helpful. Thanks.

--Fred Powledge

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It won't work cleanly...
by John.Wilkinson Mar 15, 2007 1:54PM PDT

The problem is that the current partition with Vista on it is the primary partition, so whenever you install another OS, such as XP, the files that make it bootable would be saved to that partition. Thus, removing the Vista partition after installing XP would render XP unbootable until you perform a second repair installation.

If you want to revert back to XP, the best thing you can do when you have problems such as that is use the free utility DBAN to completely wipe the hard drive and then perform a clean installation of XP. It takes a bit for DBAN to work, but it will completely wipe the hard drive (make sure you backup any important files first!) so you can start with a clean slate.

Good luck.
John

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