Looking to do a reformat - Probably back to XP from Windows 7

Hey, I'm on Windows 7 Home Premium 32. I upgraded it from Vista Home Premium that came with the laptop when I bought it last year.

I've given Windows 7 a try for the last 8-9 months and I've decided that I would like to go back to Windows XP.

When I put in a copy of Windows XP 64bit that I have a boot of the disk it doesn't even let me format - it just gives me an error message. I also have an unused XP pro ( 32 bit ) disk and when I've tried that I get the same error.

Is there a method that I have to use to downgrade? Or will I have to replace the harddrive in the laptop so I can install XP 64 bit on the new harddrive?

I can't remember doing it but, I've deleted the windows.old folder in the C:/ directory - was that a mistake?

I have 3 legit copies of Windows ( both versions of XP pro and the Toshiba Windows 7 disk ) how do I go to Windows XP? I appreciate your help.

Cheers

campbell

 

Your Toshiba probably needs the drivers for the SATA chipset to load XP. I'm not sure you'll find drivers to make your machine work right under XP, given that it shipped with Vista. Why are you going to Windows XP? What is wrong with 7?

It's highly advised against going to XP now. It's going out of support very soon, and is technology that's over 10 years old.

 

Why do you want to go back to XP? If it's for compatability reasons, a better option would probably be to install Microsoft Virtual Machine (it's free for owners of any version of Win 7) and then use your XP disk and key to install it inside the VM. If you configure it properly, you can have the exact equivalent of Win7 Professional's XP mode on Home Premium.

 

Thanks for both for your replies.

When I first got Windows 7 I adjusted everything that I could do make it like XP. - Like making the taskbar have small icons again and disabling some of the bloatware such as Windows Defender etc..

But, friends + work computers with xp x64 or xp pro still seem to work much more smoothly for me and I'm convinced that processes such as Gordian Knot for video editing run better with XP which is a lot lighter.

I've also have problems with blue screens appearing and RAM dumping itself before the computer restarts. I'll look into what post #3 said about a Virtual machine - because there are a couple of old programmes which arn't compatable with Win7 - thanks.

Maybe I should have clicked on 64bit when it asked me which one I wanted. - Would there be activation problems if I was to reformat Win7 a select Win7 64bit and use the same key?

For the first few months I had no problems running the Windows Updates - now it comes up with errors in installing things. Just a few reasons why I'm thinking of a fresh format.

My desktop computer is 6 years old with XP pro and has never had a problem and I never had problems with my old laptops which had XP 32bit. So I guess that I have a lot of good memories with using XP.

Windows 7 isn't all the bad for using because you can make it totally like the old XP with a few minor changes but, RAM dumping itself seems like compatability issues with something and I don't want a laptop that can crash.

Thanks again for your replies

Edit: I didn't think about my model of laptop not supporting SATA for older versions of windows. There is support for drivers for my ethernet/WLAN for XP - that was all I was really worrying about at this stage. - Cheers

 

If you can set the SATA controller to IDE/compatability mode in the BIOS, XP will run just fine without drivers.

You should be able to go from 32-bit to 64-bit using the same product key, the only issue you might have is if the original is an OEM key. Since you say you upgraded, though, that shouldn't be a problem. Just be aware that you cannot do an upgrade in this case, so you'll have to back up all your files and start with a clean install.

 

That should solve it. This option might also be referred to as switching from "AHCI" to "ATA" mode in the BIOS.

In addition to Ethernet/Wireless drivers, you should look into drivers for any memory card/SD card slots, Bluetooth cards, chipsets (not required, but a good idea), audio devices (including your basic audio driver), touchpad, and modem (if you think you might use it) devices you may have (video should be simple enough to find from Intel, ATI, or nVIDIA). You may be able to find a compilation of drivers for your laptop with the right Google searches.

XP 64-bit probably will introduce some significant challenges in finding all the drivers for your system; you probably won't have as much difficulty finding XP 32-bit drivers. One of the strategies that works well with Dell, and may for Toshiba as well, is searching the driver download database for laptops that ship with the same parts, but officially support XP/XP64. In some cases, however, you may have to rely on the manufacturer's site.

Both for that reason and because XP 64-bit is likely to have more issues with old applications thanks to being 64-bit (and you mentioned some old applications being an issue), I'd suggest XP 32-bit. It will limit your RAM (by how much depends on which GPU you have), but so does Windows 7 32-bit, and that doesn't appear to be causing a problem for you now.

Virtual machines are another option for the offending software - Microsoft's Virtual PC and Sun's VirtualBox are free offerings that both support Windows fairly well (I've run XP 64-bit for a short amount of time on VirtualBox with an XP 32-bit host, and it worked well. I've also run 7 x64 on VirtualBox and 95/98 on VirtualPC), and VMWare is a non-free application that is reputed to be at least as good. Syberia isn't correct that an XP VM is free to all versions of Windows 7 (it's only the professional version or higher), but VirtualPC is free - it's the XP license that isn't, and you have that.

If you can find the drivers, though, XP may indeed work as well or better than Windows 7 as a host OS. I certainly am glad I switched from Vista to XP on my laptop that was supposedly "designed for Windows Vista" but sure didn't seem like it. The end of support in 4 years is something to be aware of, but if you typically upgrade every 3 years or more frequently, that need not dissuade you from using XP (and it's not like XP will immediately become terribly vulnerable on the Internet after support ends, especially if you keep security software installed, which will still be available, just as it still is for Windows 98). End of support from application developers may become an issue in spots earlier than that, but I doubt it will be widespread before 2014 except in future versions of many Microsoft products (Windows Live, Office, possibly Visual Studio), and in games that require DirectX 10 or 11.

So I wouldn't hesitate to plan on using XP for another two years, and I doubt it will be much of an issue for another four years. If it does, you have a Windows 7 disc from Toshiba, and can always dual-boot (or possibly use a VM) for whatever software that may come out that would require Vista/7.

 

I thought that's what I was saying - download Virtual PC and use your own XP disc and key to install that inside of it.

I know I read something on Google that said if you went this route, you could tweak a few settings to make it behave exactly like XP mode from higher versions of Windows 7. Unfortunately, I don't remember how, or where.

 

With the XP virtual machine running in Windows Virtual PC, click Tools > Enable Integration Features to enable Integration with the default settings.

Or:
Open your Windows Virtual PC folder and highlight the XP virtual machine.
Click Settings > Integration Features in the left pane of the dialog.
Enable Enable at startup.
Configure Share devices and resources to your liking.
Click Auto Publish in the left pane.
Enable Automatically publish virtual applications.

If an application is not automatically publishing to your Windows 7 Start menu, create a shortcut to the application in Programs folder of the All Users Start menu inside the XP VM.

--L.

 

I went ahead again and tried to install with my XP 64bit disk. It is the same problem though where you can't install it on on the partition which has Windows 7 because it gives an error "drive may be damaged" when you try and reformat it.

I was able to install XP64bit on a small 2GB partition but, ofcourse I want more space than that. It was running very smoothly and I put on a couple of drivers for sound and WiFi and it was working perfectly.

I tried one of those autonuke boot programmes from dban.org but, it started and then refused to write the harddrive with 0s.

Windows have done something which makes it really awkward to reformat your harddrive once you have Windows 7 installed.

I was able to reinstall Windows 7 32bit but, not 64 bit. I guess it's because I legally committed to 32bit once I was given the option between the two when I installed it last year.

In the mean time I'll see if the laptop is running better with a reinstall of Win7 32bit while trying to find a way to format the harddrive so that I can reformat.

Cheers

 

Try putting the XP 64 disk back into the drive. Restart the computer and press the appropriate button to boot from disk. When it asks you which drive to install to, press advance and you can format the drive.

 

No, that isn't working. I'm getting a "drive may be damaged error". And also Dban's boot and Nuke isn't working and is having "non-fatal errors" soon after I boot up with it. So, yeah I'm finding formatting the harddrive difficult.

 

I have to yell, WHAT BLOATWARE?? Windows 7 runs better than XP overall... at least for me, i run Windows 7 Ultimate on my 5 year old ThinkPad T43 with a Pentium M 760, 1.5GB DDR2 RAM, and an old ATI X300, it can fluidly run all Aero effects, and any programs that rarely crash are well managed by Windows 7, generally much smoother than XP did when any program crashed, boot time from pushing the start button, to complete login is a mere 40 seconds approximately. I can't understand what the problem with Windows 7 is, and why people are so attached to XP. It's ugly, outdated, inefficient power management, not as well tuneable, and primarily, FROM 2001, last decade... to put it in perspective.

 

Thanks for your post.

I've managed to change over to Windows 7 64bit home premium and happily activated again with key. I'll try it out. Something is stopping me from formatting all of the 320GB harddrive so I can put XP on one large partition. So, in the mean time I'll stick with Windows 7 until I possibly upgrade to a 7200rpm harddrive.

Things to hate about Windows 7? It clearly boots about 10 seconds slower than XP 64bit and I can't get below 30 processes running at idle where XP is at 17 processes so, clearly there is some bloatware.

One upside of Windows 7 is that it has reached the 21st century with a good setup for making wireless easy and it comes with most video codecs that you will need so, you don't have to manually install them.

 

Have you tried running a HD error check from the HD properties menu? Or alternately running a chkdsk /f from a CMD prompt?

 

If you have everything backed up to an external source (i.e. not on the same hard drive), just download and run killdisk. Then you should be able to format it how you want. Killdisk will write zeros to everything on the hard drive. YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING. But then you should be able to format it how you want.

Although still do the chkdsk because if something is bad on the disk then killdisk won't help much.

 

Another option, if there's something Windows doesn't like, is downloading a Linux LiveCD and formatting your drive that way, then installing Windows XP back in the newly created blank space.

 

Thanks guys. I've ran chkdsk and went through the health check in HDtune and both had no problems.

So, I'm assuming that dban's boot and nuke programme doesn't work properly on newer laptops.

I'm happy with the way the laptop is at the moment with Win 7 x64 at the moment but, I'll try out killdisk in about four weeks to see if that will successfully format the harddrive so I can put XP64 on the laptop.

Cheers