Tech question - Vista to XP

Me ^ | 1/22/08 | Me

[Domandred]

It's become that time again that I need to upgrade my computer. I'm looking at purchasing a Dell Inspiron notebook.

Question is how easy is it to strip Vista off the machine and install XP on to it.

I have the technical know how to do the XP installation and such, and own XP already so that's not an issue.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Don’t know if it’s still available, but IIRC, Dell offered WinXP on new machines for customers who desired it.

[Still Thinking]

I have seen on some old Dimension desktops the boot partition is actually not the C: drive contining Windows, plus they had that crappy diagnostic / recovery partition at the end of the drive. If you’re doing a full nuke and reinstall this won’t affect you though. You could even do it on a brand new hard drive, if you wanted to save the Vista install for some reason. The only problem you’re likely to encounter is if some of the hardware is from the Vista era, XP device drivers may not exist.

[Still Thinking]

No hardware with Vista-only drivers?

[N3WBI3]

Apples are great, Im using one thats four years old (and I have no intention of another purchase any time soon). I dropped some case for more memory awhile back and I bought Tiger but other than that..

Initial Purchase 3K (Apple Titanium Power Book 2003)
Ram Upgrade $150 2005
OS Upgrade $129 2007

in four years Ive spent 3,300$ and Im hoping to get another 2 out of it (at least).. My mother got 8 years out of her 900$ apple blue and white before getting an iMac in 2006.

[N3WBI3]

Its not hard if the underpinning of the OS are suitable. You can with little effort make a Linux box look smell and feel like a mac. Maybe not as polished but close..

The problem is the underpinnings of MS os is crap..

[militem]

Did you buy one?

[papasmurf]

A Sager? I'm on my 3rd new and 4th total Sager. This one, the NP8790, I've had since 2004.

Sager is actually Sager-Midern. An affiliate of Clevo. They offer the latest technology today, at yesterday's prices, and back it up with world class service. I don't even consider other brands anymore, except for Tablet PC's, which Toshiba has the lock on, IMO.

Clevo has the reputation as the quickest time to market, and lowest warranty failure rate of any of the OEM's or their vendors.

While Dell, Hp, Lenovo, etc. have inventory to move before they introduce new product, Sager/Clevo does not.

Obviously, they get my 5 star rating. LOL

[shorty_harris]

You could even do it on a brand new hard drive, if you wanted to save the Vista install for some reason.

Good idea. This is what I did with my ancient Dell laptop. I bought a new disk from Frys, a new drive caddy from ebay, and installed Linux on it. I still have the old Win2K disk laying around somewhere.

[antiRepublicrat]

I’d like to stay with Dell since far as I know they are still mostly a US Company (at least more so then HP/Compaq).

They're all made in Asia anyway.

It'll be relatively easy to install XP if the Dell support site has XP drivers for your specific machine. It probably does.

[ShadowAce]

This one, the NP8790, I've had since 2004.

I actually have an 8890, w/ 1G RAM. Had it since 2003.

[Lee'sGhost]

XP has an SP-3?! Damn! When did that happen?

[papasmurf]

Ya’ see, I knew I liked you for a reason! LOL

Is it your first Sager?

[antiRepublicrat]

I can’t say anything about Sager these days, but in the mid 90s there was no better laptop on the market. I was involved in the selection and purchase of some laptops and these went straight to the top. They were rugged, too, even surviving a bad car crash with rollover relatively unscathed (sitting unsecured in the passenger seat).

[ShadowAce]

Yeah. I shopped between Sager and Alienware at the time. Unfortunately, it's been forced to become a desktop and one of the hinges has totally broken off, and moving it has become problematic.

I bought it w/o an OS and installed Fedora Core 1 on it as soon as it showed up. I like the 8890 as it has a 17" screen, ATI Radeon 9600 video card, hardware RAID, two hard drives, every conceivable connector on the back, and a built-in removable MP3 player. It's been a great PC, though at 12 lbs, it is tiring to travel with. :) Luckily, my job bought me a Dell Latitude D830 and told me I could do whatever I want with it. Needless to say, I never booted up the windows it had on it. It's first boot up was with Fedora 6 DVD for a fresh install. It's now running Fedora 8.

[papasmurf]

Ours are pretty similar in specs, I think. I have dual hd’s and raid also.

Have you called David at Sager to see how much it would cost to fix it? Are they top (screen) or bottom (case) hinges? I’ve seen ‘em (8890’s) advertised on notebookforums and on eBay, also. As well, there is a European distributor that sells parts.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Check out Systemax. You can get their machines at TigerDirect.
Personally, I recommend a Mac, but they use only top of the line hardware, so they cost more money.
But they're way easier to use and come bundled with all the software that you sit at your PC thinking "man, I wish there was an easy way to create a slideshow and burn it to a DVD."
Good luck.

[Old Sarge]

XP SP3 is due to come out in March of ‘08 - but there are pre-release copies available for enterprise users.

The release is all part of damage control on the part of Microsoft; the industry standard is XP SP2, as not even W2K is being supported anymore.

[Still Thinking]

I’ve got a menagerie of laptops in addition to a couple desktops, and numerous old drives laying around, some blank and some with working OS’s and apps. I’ve found it a good idea to mark on each HDD what OS is on it.

[shorty_harris]

Ha! Same here...although it’s fun plugging in an old dusty unmarked drive, and seeing what happens...

[Kaylee Frye]

I’d mainly be concerned about finding compatible drivers - which is why I’m living with my Vista HP laptop. I could dream it was XP, but I’d rather have the drivers for sure working than try and mess around for ages with XP... :( Good luck to you!