Installing XP on a Vista Machine.. Help Please

[shapeless]

Hello Guys

I need some help/advise.. Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

Today I bought a new PC for myself and I'm very excited about it.. (Call of Duty MW2 lol )

It's a ACER X3810 System with Vista Home premium bundled.

Now my problem is I don't like Vista. I had bad experiences in the past and I dislike vista very much. I love XP sp2.. Now I wanted to get rid of vista and install XP so I booted with a XP CD and as soon as the hardware inspection is done the system crashed with a BSOD.. which is very frustrating..

I'm thinking maybe its not possible to install XP while vista is already in C partition but then again aren't we booting from XP CD ?

What are my other options ? Any idea why this is happening ?

Can I run Ultimate Boot CD and somehow format the C partition first then attempt to clean install XP ?

Because its a new system I don't want to mess it up..

My system Specs

[cpp]Brand ACER
Computer Type tbc
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo
Intel Processor Star Rating tbc
Processor model number E7400
Processor speed 2.8 GHz
Processor bus 1066 MHz
Processor cache 3 MB
Memory (RAM) 4 GB
Storage (hard drive) 1TB
Storage (hard drive) type SATA
Personal Media Drive No
Operating system Windows Vista Home Premium
Application software Not included
Shared graphics No
Dedicated graphics ATI RadHD4350 512 MB
Graphics type tbc[/cpp]

I read somewhere that this is caused by SATA drivers and I have to switch to IDE then install or something but its not very clear.. Please Help

Appreciate it a lot..

Greetings from London

 

[goatjc]

If you just bought it, sit tight & wait for the free Win7 upgrade.

Don't get me wrong, Win7 probably will have its quirks, but you'll find it much easier / faster to work in. I look at Win7 as a less bloated Vista.

Honestly, if I were you, I wouldn't downgrade back to XP. . .especially if this machine is going to be around for awhile.

 

[shapeless]

Hmmm Interesting

I bought it cause I wanted to play games and I'm a designer so I run lot of heavy apps like 3D Studio max, PS, DW and I'm not sure windows 7 supports them. I can't go through the hassle of looking for stuff to support WIN7.. Thats the problem..

I like XP cause I can do everything I want without any problems. If all fails I have no other option than to use Vista which I really don't want to

Thanks for your reply though

 

[aford10]

In the BIOS, try changing the SATA mode to IDE instead of AHCI

 

[scudst0rm]

On a different note, you want to play COD:MW2 on this machine? You will barely be able to run it on a radeon 4350, you will probably want to upgrade the GPU. and see as its a prebuilt machine that might require a power supply upgrade as well, depending on the GPU you select.

Also, considering the processor intensive apps you run why didn't you get a quad core machine?

 

[shapeless]

In the BIOS, try changing the SATA mode to IDE instead of AHCI

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG !

WORKS !

DAMN

Thanks a million bro.. you're my hero

 

[Prescott_666]

The first thing you need to do is find all the drivers that you need to use XP with each hardware component. I'm guessing that they don't exist. In which case you don't really have a choice. You are going to upgrade to Windows 7 home premium, which as someone said above should be a free upgrade.

If you upgrade to Windows 7 Professional (not free) you can run in virtual XP.

 

[aford10]

No problem....the format/install start fine?

 

[Prescott_666]

I'm not going to get too sanctimonious about it, because I'm sending this on a machine with XP Professional with the SATA mode set to IDE, but if you have a floppy, you should load the driver onto the floppy, reload XP, hit F6 when it asks if you have other drivers to load, and then insert the floppy when it asks for the driver.

But before you do that though, go to the Device Manager and see how many drivers you don't have.

 

[shapeless]

One more question

I installed XP... works fine..but

it only shows 3GB of ram but my system has 4GB !!!

Why ? Sorry I'm a newbie

Does XP supports only 3GB ? or its just showing ? does it going to affect my speed ?

Many thanks.. great forum btw

 

[shapeless]

The first thing you need to do is find all the drivers that you need to use XP with each hardware component. I'm guessing that they don't exist. In which case you don't really have a choice. You are going to upgrade to Windows 7 home premium, which as someone said above should be a free upgrade.

If you upgrade to Windows 7 Professional (not free) you can run in virtual XP.

Bro They have all the drivers for XP in the acer site

I'm downloading a few basic drivers. I'm going to run driver genius in the system as soon as I get my LAN driver working. so I can get all the latest drivers.

 

[aford10]

XP will max out at ~3.25GB of RAM.

 

[shapeless]

XP will max out at ~3.25GB of RAM.

Thanks for that info. I read here somewhere that 32bit only utilizes 3GB max.. mmm does that mean I left out a GIG of ram ?

I personally don't like vista so is it worth having XP and run on 3GB or should I just get Windows 7 instead ? will Windows 7 Run Smoothly ?

What do you think mate ?

Thanks

 

[shapeless]

On a different note, you want to play COD:MW2 on this machine? You will barely be able to run it on a radeon 4350, you will probably want to upgrade the GPU. and see as its a prebuilt machine that might require a power supply upgrade as well, depending on the GPU you select.

Also, considering the processor intensive apps you run why didn't you get a quad core machine?

Sorry I'm not much of a techie in terms of hardware

I'm dissapointed I might not be able to run MW2

 

[psycho sykes]

My Mobility Radeon X1400 is able to run CoD WaW @800*600 with medium details..
I think the HD4350 can run it on the same res with the same settings (Considering that MW2 will have better graphics..)
Damn I'm counting seconds for this game! :lol:

 

[aford10]

Thanks for that info. I read here somewhere that 32bit only utilizes 3GB max.. mmm does that mean I left out a GIG of ram ?

I personally don't like vista so is it worth having XP and run on 3GB or should I just get Windows 7 instead ? will Windows 7 Run Smoothly ?

What do you think mate ?

Thanks

I haven't used windows7 yet, but from all accounts I've heard, it's nice. It's got some nice additions to make it more user friendly.

You could always stick with what you got for now and wait until you see windows7 on other PCs to see if you like it or not. However, XP is getting old, the switch to windows7 is probably inevitable.

 

[shapeless]

My Mobility Radeon X1400 is able to run CoD WaW @800*600 with medium details..
I think the HD4350 can run it on the same res with the same settings (Considering that MW2 will have better graphics..)
Damn I'm counting seconds for this game! :lol:

Wow something to be happy about. I wish I asked you guys for an opinion before I bought this anyways its too late now. As long as I can run the game with some details I'm a happy man

Can't wait