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Hallo, Irecently bought a new Dell XPS M1330, preinstalled with VISTA, I am having problems when it comes to access my word and excel files created with windos 95-up to XP. I also have problems because my work place doesnt support Vista, hence cannot access crucial services such internet.
I want to remove this unreliable Vista and replace with XP. How do I go arround this. can somebody Help please.
Thanks Dany
pop in your XP disc and boot from it ... delete the Vista partition, reformat the Hard Drive and install XP.
If you really want to eradicate all traces of Vista ... then download Darik's Boot & Nuke ... blow away the Hard Drive and install XP normally.
@procyonone: If you bought a new OEM copy of Windows from somewhere like newegg then yes.
If you intend to use the OEM copy from another computer then you cannot. The OEM End-User License Agreement (EULA) forbids the transfer an OEM Windows install from one computer to another and the activation in Windows XP would likely enforce that if you tried to do so.
@procyonone: Ok, in that case you should read the article at http://arstechnica.com/news.ar.....-8730.html on other limitations then the lack of transfer ability.
If you are getting a new computer I would recommend staying with Windows Vista unless you have a program that isn't compatible. Windows Vista does have many improvements over Windows XP.
You will be able to install Windows XP after that because the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) that loads when you turn on the computer can read the cd and start the setup.
In case you don't about it what happens when you turn on the computer is that the Basic Input/Output Sytem (BIOS) loads and takes care of basic setup of hardware like hard drives, cd/dvd drives and keyboards and then it passes control over to an OS like Windows XP.
You don't need to use Boot and Nuke though as you can just boot format the drive within the Windows XP setup.
You just need to tell the BIOS to boot from the Windows XP cd instead of the hard drive first.
The Boot and Nuke is overkill for removing Windows XP. Boot and Nuke's main purpose is to make all the data is totally gone from the drive to remove senitive information like bank information and such.
As for installing Windows XP, if you are attempting to install it on computer that come with Vista I would recommend following the steps at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....-computer/ to install Windows XP along side side Windows Vista as there can be problems with putting XP on a machine that came with Vista so you will want Vista around just in case.
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