You can’t.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :)
Why do you want to?
I’m only asking because I find Windows 7 to be pretty problem free.
Burn your favorite copy of freeware over top. Puppy linux is probably best right now. What did you do to your machine?
Save everything you want off the computer to an external drive or DVDs. Put the WinXP in the drive and reboot the machine. Most machines will have a way to access a boot menu. Choose boot from whatever your optical drive is. Follow instructions on screen for a “Full” install with repartition and format.
Now, why would you want to do this? Win7 is one of Microsofts best OS in a long time. I skipped WinVista and had WinXP custom installed on a couple of machines but Win7 is superior.
You want to repartition the disk, throw away whatever's already there, set up a new partition and go from there. You don't want to update, repair, install alongside, whatever.
Obviously, this assumes there's nothing on the current C disk that you want to keep. If not, be sure you've backed up everything you want to keep before you do anything. Because you are about to nuke the hard drive.
Buy an apple. I am also looking for a work around. I bought a windows 7 box only to discover my Epsom 2200 printer won’t work. Epsom hasn’t issued any drivers for windows 7.
The only thing I am thinking is buying an old xp box off of Craig’s list.
Do you have an old ME floppy?
FDISK!!
XP OEM requires a formatted, empty disk. It will not instal over an existing version of Windows although, I never tried installing it over a version newer than XP.
I think it will depend on your computer hardware. I had to leave XP, hated Vista and Win 7 isn’t much better. I’ve had constant aggravation. XP was much better than either for me.
Try running Linux or Windows 7 as your base operating system, and then run XP in a virtual machine for your “legacy” needs.
VirtualBox is good freeware for doing just that, or you can go the commercial route with VMWare.
I do this with Mac OS X as the base operating system, and it seems to work quite well.
7 works fine.
Just use the disk, it’s windows.
What model printer do you have?
Also, it is important to find out if XP drivers are available for your computer’s hardware.
Microsoft will end extended support for XP SP3 on April 8, 2014. If you are connected to the Internet, best of luck keeping the bad guys out of your computer after that date.
Are you sure you can't get the printer to work under Win7? What's the model number?
2. Make sure you have all important data backed up.
3. Boot SRCD with default values, then type "startx" to get into the graphical user interface. On difficult systems that will not launch it, type "wizard" at the prompt and choose an alternate method.
4. Mouse over to the bottom icons until one "gparted" shows, then click to launch.
5. Make sure your default hard drive is selected (usually identified as 'sda', or 'sha' on older systems), then delete all partitions and click the 'apply' button to proceed.
Note: THIS WILL PERMANENTLY DELETE YOUR USABLE O.S. SO PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. ALL RESPONCEABILITY IS YOUR OWN.
Boot with your WinXP CD and it will detect no installed OS and proceed normally. Have fun!
Okay... A serious word of caution before you proceed:
!!!BACK UP EVERYTHING!!! Depending upon how you go forward, this process can result in everything being wiped off the hdd and totally unrecoverable!!!
PRIORITY ONE:
If you have a name brand computer, go to the manufacturer’s site, find your particular machine by it’s model number, go to it’s download page and SEE IF IT HAS XP DRIVERS AVAILABLE. If there are no XP drivers available for ALL/ANY of your internal hardware, your present course may well turn into a nightmare.
If you have a whitebox (rolled yer own), make certain the motherboard and any cards in the box have XP drivers (for the same reason).
PRIORITY TWO:
Determine if your machine has a RESTORE PARTITION onboard the hard drive - If it does, I would highly suggest using a different hdd or getting an image of the restore partition so that it can be replaced later (either for if you change your mind, or for eventual resale purposes).
Beyond those two factors, the object of the exercise will be to reformat the hard drive (whether the existing or different) in order to receive the new operating system - The easiest way to do this is with a partitioning utility, or a zero-write utility (which you can generally obtain from your hdd manufacturer). To be safe, be certain to replace the Master Boot Record while you are at it.
Once the hdd is without any partitions, simply make sure your CMOS boot sequence is set to boot to cd/dvd as first boot, throw in the XP cd and boot to it. From there it is usually just a matter of following XP’s reasonably easy instructions...
One can also consider a dual boot scenario, where XP and Win7 exist on the same machine, where one can boot into either one... If this is of interest, write back.
One can also consider running XP inside of a virtual machine inside of Win7 or Linux... again, this is another whole can of fish, so write back for specifics...
I used XP from the time of its inception, until I my fingers were finally pried away from my dying dinosaur computers last year.
I went out and bought a new E-machines computer with Windows 7 on it, and so far it’s been as reliable and user friendly as my old XP system ever was.
Just curious, but why would you want to go back to XP now?
Downgrades are difficult, and I’ve done ‘em on all kinds of systems. You can bitch all you want, but progress is what we’re all about since the invention of the wheel (you wanna go back to the pre-wheel times of Eden?) I hope you have found your answer. Best of luck.
This is a strange choice, simply for a printer issue.
Please note that Windows 7 is basically a modified Windows XP kernel (and also note that MS will never admit that).
As such, if you are running Windows 7, you are in essence running Windows XP.
Again, strange choice.
There is a likely a workaround to your problem somewhere on the internet. Have you searched ?