Installing Windows XP on WIndows 7 Machine

[Edvaard]

I purchased a new Acer PC AX1470-UR31P with Win7 Home Premium 64 bit, AMD DUAL-CORE A4-3400-APU 1 TB HD, 4 GB DDR3 MEMORY, DVD Super Multi-drive, Multi-in-1 media card reader, Integrated LAN 10/100/1000 in October 2011. Buyer's Remorse! I love the PC but HATE Win7. Have given it a fair run
now for almost nine months and wish to return to XP. I have XP on a 2006 e-Machine T5048, but it is
getting some miles on it now and have decided it would be wiser to install, if possible, on the newer
PC for a host of reasons including much more HD room. No "restore" CD was provided with the Acer and I was told by an associate at CompUSA that XP could NOT be put on this PC since it never had it on to begin with. I'm 81 1/2 years old and while I don't think I've lost "too many" neuron-connectors, I never was a computer-whiz in the first place even though I've played with ham-radio all my life, and still do. Am I "stuck" with Win7 on this Acer (as is) or is there hope to "retro-fit" XP thereon? The e-Machine has a 160GB HD, but I already have 1.35GB used, so can see the end of the road in the near future. Subscribe to Carbonite, so have cloud backup so transferring my 'stuff' from this XP to the potential Acer PC shouldn't be that complicated, and in fact did so once already from this PC to the Acer Win7 and then
BACK to this XP PC. Hey, I am still driving my 1990 Lincoln TC with but 104,000 miles thereon too!
Ed ****Mod edit to remove the silly posting of personal information**** Thanks!

 

[cl-scott]

You are "stuck" with Windows 7.

1: You could not simply take the XP CD from your eMachines computer and put XP on the newer Acer. eMachines did not become an Acer brand until 2007, but even if it was after Acer bought Gateway (and eMachines along with it) it'd be dubious that it would work. It would be a violation of the Windows license to do it, it would fail activation, and you'd run into the next problem

2: There are almost certainly no drivers for XP to support the hardware in your newer laptop. So, even if you managed to get XP installed, then it would be a very lackluster experience with the bulk of the hardware not working properly.

3: If you "upgrade" to Windows 7 Professional you then get access to what is known as XP Mode, which basically lets you run Windows XP inside Windows 7. So you could go that route, and just sort of live inside the XP environment. Performance will be a bit degraded for numerous technical reasons not worth getting into, but that's your best bet at this point.

Microsoft wants to get XP off the books so to speak. It's old, full of security holes that would be difficult and time consuming to fix without breaking a number of programs. It also is simply just a product of another era before people started wanting all of these seamless media integration options. It is essentially a developmental dead end.

Finally, it is unwise to post email addresses on forums visible to people the world over, and even more unwise to put a phone number. I will report this to the forum moderators and hopefully they can simply edit it out, but otherwise I will recommend they delete your post to limit the exposure of your sensitive personal information as much as possible.

 

[Edvaard]

You are "stuck" with Windows 7.

1: You could not simply take the XP CD from your eMachines computer and put XP on the newer Acer. eMachines did not become an Acer brand until 2007, but even if it was after Acer bought Gateway (and eMachines along with it) it'd be dubious that it would work. It would be a violation of the Windows license to do it, it would fail activation, and you'd run into the next problem

2: There are almost certainly no drivers for XP to support the hardware in your newer laptop. So, even if you managed to get XP installed, then it would be a very lackluster experience with the bulk of the hardware not working properly.

3: If you "upgrade" to Windows 7 Professional you then get access to what is known as XP Mode, which basically lets you run Windows XP inside Windows 7. So you could go that route, and just sort of live inside the XP environment. Performance will be a bit degraded for numerous technical reasons not worth getting into, but that's your best bet at this point.

Microsoft wants to get XP off the books so to speak. It's old, full of security holes that would be difficult and time consuming to fix without breaking a number of programs. It also is simply just a product of another era before people started wanting all of these seamless media integration options. It is essentially a developmental dead end.

Finally, it is unwise to post email addresses on forums visible to people the world over, and even more unwise to put a phone number. I will report this to the forum moderators and hopefully they can simply edit it out, but otherwise I will recommend they delete your post to limit the exposure of your sensitive personal information as much as possible.

Thanks. I appreciate all of your advice. Edvaard

 

[Edvaard]

Sounded to me like to simplest way to go would be to obtain a Win7 Pro machine and work XP within as suggested. To that end have
ordered a "refurbished" Dell Optiplex 740 Desktop PC with AMD Athelon X2 processor, 4GB memory and 1TB HD yesterday and should arrive at the local Wal-mart for pickup in about 7 to 10 days. The price was right at $258 and is warranted for one-year, so what the heck... Have never purchased anything "refurbished" from a store like Wal-Mart but will have more to say, one way or the other when we get it up and running.