How to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP

Hello

I have W7 ULTIMATE on a partition drive (C) with the Windows.old folder from a previous installation (W7).

I don't quite understand how to downgrade to XP

At boot time I insert the W7 premium DVD ; press key ; than what should I do ?

The command prompt does not appear in the following steps

I follow this tutorial with no luck so far

How To Downgrade From Windows 7 To XP (Step-by-Step)

Could you plesae explain to me
regards

 

Do you have a Windows XP install disk? Because your Windows.old from your previous Windows 7 installation will not downgrade you to XP. You're going to have to basically reinstall the system from scratch to go to XP.

Why would you WANT to downgrade anyway though? XP is only getting security patches any more, no new features, few new drivers, it's relatively insecure... there is almost no reason to run XP.

 

as you have win 7 ultimate you can use the xp mode so no need to downgrade, just use that when you want to use xp..
as said xp is old and i see no reason to use it these days

 

Good morning

I have the Windows XP install disk , but I don't know how to use it beside W7ultimate ... I though I could have XP as dual boot ; but there is a bug in that specific BIOS , if you try to install XP at installation you have the Stop error screen .

There's nothing to do to avoid it .... because in The Bios if you switch in the advanced option ACHI ---> ATA ; than the Optical drive as well as the Usb drive are disconnected . I wasen't able to solve the case ( it's either one or the other) maybe flashing the BIOS , but I don't know what to do , so ...
the alternative for me is to have one partition with W7 and another one with W7 downgrade
that it's possible according some tutorials , but so far I couldn't do it , because my Windows.old is another instance of Windows7 ( not XP)

"So I could I have Windows.old with XP os if I can't install it " this is a bit weird

I will try that ...

thanks for your answers

regards

 

As I have previously stated ,
( no one seems to understand ) The Windows XP install cannot be done ( EVEN WITH ALL THE SATA DRIVERS incl in the cd ) because of the STOP ERROR SCREEN (the Blue death screen prevent me ) the HDD is well seen when loading at boot :
Reasons
Because the BIOS HDD is set AHCI ( and that is given me this error) and if switched to ATA than DVD ( is disconnected) it won't load - I have tried to solve this issue with no luck - I cannot install XP - on this machine ( Alienware Dell). If there is a solution I didn't found it .

 

I, too, am curious as to the "why" here. What do you need to have done that cannot be handled through a virtual machine?

The BIOS on Sony VAIO F series is defaulted to AHCI. At least I think it is. Anyway, I was able to install XP using slipstreamed SATA drivers. I played around with this last year when I thought I needed it for a game.

 

if the bios is set to achi, it needs sata drivers. if its set to ide, it doesn't. so yes, you need the correct sata drivers correctly integrated into the cd to get beyond the BSOD.

but still, the reason why you need xp would be interesting.

 

VAG-Com 311.2 doesn't really work in XP mode so I use dualboot in one of my laptops. Software works, cable driver installs just fine but it cannot communicate with my car.

Oh and I have iTunes on that same XP installation. I hate it so much I don't want it on any computer I actually use but I sometimes might need it

 

What I don't understand is that my driver Msahci.sys is Started in Regedit ( start = 0)

As stated in this tutorial

Solution for SATA blue-screen in Windows 7


; When I check the drivers of my Disk ;
I can see

disk.sys
partmgr.sys
PCTCore64.sys ( unsigned)
snapman.sys ( unsigned)

I'm kind of lost why is there 4 drivers and no sign of Msahci.sys ?

I have tried to update the drivers showing the path into system32 , but that didn't work , because the driver update is looking for an .inf

So far the HDD works

 

I'm not quite sure I understand where you're going with this.

The msachi.sys is loaded upon startup of Win7, but not XP. So, even though you find the driver in regedit and stuff, it means nothing when you try to boot into XP using the install disc.

You already know that XP does not natively support SATA, and that's why you slipstreamed the drivers. Did you slipstream the correct drivers? I used iastor.sys, as provided from Intel in the F6 install version on the support site.