Hi there.

my mum has a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop with Vista Business installed. Now, she did a computer course and everything was carried out on XP.

At this stage she couldnt handle the step-up just yet and so I was wondering how I would save the current installation of Vista, as I am sure she will make the step up at some stage, and then be able to install XP fresh in the knowledge that I can upgrade to Vista eventually?

Unfortunately I bought this laptop from a friend who has no longer got the installation disks (prob lost or something). I have an XP installation disk which is not used which I can use.


I hope this makes sense.

Is the hard drive partitioned? if so, why not install xp on the other partition.

Vista allows you to resize partitions, maybe this will help:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

If you want downgrade you have two options:
1. Have dual boot - 1 for your existing Vista and second for XP. I your laptop came with a single harddisk with a single partiotion, you will have to shrink the Vista partition and make space for the second partition for XP.
2. Format the drive and do a clean install for XP. You would need the Laptop restore CD/DVDs if you want your Vista back in the future.
(I assume you have taken backups of your data for either option).

Check out this link that provides all the information: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...ista-computer/

Should you have any problems, let me know.

-Moiz Tankiwala

Guys I never even thought of Dual Boot which is a good idea, I'll follow the instructions at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...ista-computer/ later on and let you know how I get on. I just hope the C drive at the minute is pretty big.

One thing to remember though, it's not having an XP disk that is important, it's having a valid and legal serial number for it.

check to make sure you are going to be able to get windows xp drivers for the devices in the laptop before you go to far !

Yes I have a valid and legal serial number. Never actually thought about the drivers part but too late now, have XP installed but am having a problem booting into XP.

I am getting an error regarding ntldr:

Windows Boot Manager has experienced a problem.
File: \ntldr
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The selected entry couldn't be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

Guys I just followed the first 4 steps under "General Troubleshooting Guidelines" from here http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBC...ing+Windows+XP and now have booted into XP successfully. I replaced the ntldr and ntdetect.com files that were on the system with those from the aforementioned site. Hope this helps someone else who has such a problem.

Thanks alot.

I have often thought of downgrading myself. but I keep hearing that I won't be able to find the drivers necessary to run the hardware in my Vista native system.

check web sites of the makers of your hardware. if you own a major brand computer like Compaq/HP/Dell or what ever ,do a search with the service tag /model # for winxp drivers