Member Avatar for Indianblues

Hi

I have TOSHIBA Satelite series Laptop with Me. when i bought it Vista OS is there. Now I want to install XP in it. Is it possible?

  • 8 Contributors
  • 9 Replies
  • 195 Views
  • 3 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by josephwright

Dani AI

Generated

Short expert summary and practical checklist.

Installing XP on a Toshiba Satellite that shipped with Vista is feasible, but a few specific compatibility and safety steps are often missed. As and pointed out, confirm valid licensing or downgrade rights and preserve any vendor recovery media; correctly flagged keeping the restore option. The points below add the technical details that most people run into.

Before touching partitions or wiping the drive: create full recovery media and a full-disk image (so the hidden recovery partition can be restored), and archive any OEM product keys or paperwork. Prepare a driver pack on USB that includes chipset, storage-controller (SATA/AHCI/RAID), graphics, LAN, Wi‑Fi, audio, touchpad and power-management/function-key utilities. If the XP installer cannot see the hard disk the usual cause is the SATA controller running in AHCI/RAID mode — two practical fixes are switching the BIOS to IDE/Compatibility/Legacy mode (if available) or supplying the correct mass-storage driver during setup.

If keeping Vista, install XP on a separate partition (dual-boot) rather than overwriting the recovery partition; note that a true dual-boot does not slow the OS you actually boot. If XP is needed only for a legacy app, run it inside a virtual machine to avoid driver and partitioning headaches. Also be aware that Windows XP reached end of support on April 8, 2014 — any XP system is exposed to unpatched security risk and should be isolated from sensitive networks or used only offline.

Final practical test: after installation, verify suspend/resume, battery reporting, wireless and function keys before deleting any recovery media or repartitioning. These steps address the common traps that block a successful XP install on Vista-era laptops.

Recommended Answers

All 9 Replies

Member Avatar for hughv

It might be possible if you can find all the drivers. Start with the Toshiba web site and verify it's possible.
Why would you want to do this?

Member Avatar for OlyComputers

You can't do any "Upgrade" to an older version of windows. You'll need to format the hard drive and start from scratch, but Yes. At this point virtually any hardware that has Vista drivers has XP drivers (but not the other way around). Take Hughvs advice and go to toshibas site to download all the drivers in advance, then use the XP CD to format the drive and install a fresh copy of the OS.

Be sure to keep the Toshiba restore disk around in case you decide to go back to vista down the road, you paid for the license; you may as well keep the option.

Member Avatar for krishniha

yes. it is possible, but having 2 O'S ur computer will be slow, however it depends upon RAM. if it is 2GB RAM no problem to install xp.
what i suggest is go for ultimate version that is the best 4 vista.

Member Avatar for OM PARWANI

Yes it is possible only but it will slow down speed but if you ram of 2gb
you should also visit the toshiba site

Member Avatar for jbennet

What edition of vista is it. If its business or ultimate, you could use downgrade rights.

Member Avatar for Stefano Mtangoo

If HP, Drivers are somewhere in C:\SWSETUP if I remember well!
Make sure you find and backup your systeme before do anything. NOT too far from what others have said though

Member Avatar for OlyComputers

Having two OSes on your system will not slow it down in any way. They must be thinking of "virtualization" where you install software that emulates a second computer, running one as the host and a second as a client. Simply setting up a dual-boot system with two seperate operating systems will not slow down your system except for the few extra seconds it takes to select the operating system to boot from.

commented: You are, of course, correct. :) +36
commented: yeah exactly +30
Member Avatar for Stefano Mtangoo

Having two OSes on your system will not slow it down in any way. They must be thinking of "virtualization" where you install software that emulates a second computer, running one as the host and a second as a client. Simply setting up a dual-boot system with two seperate operating systems will not slow down your system except for the few extra seconds it takes to select the operating system to boot from.

That true! :)
Emulating is running two things at same time but pure multiboot runs one in one!
+1 vote to your answer

Member Avatar for josephwright

Hi

I have TOSHIBA Satelite series Laptop with Me. when i bought it Vista OS is there. Now I want to install XP in it. Is it possible?

As others have pointed out, you are only legal if you have downgrade rights from Vista (Ultimate or Business, I think), or if you have an XP license from elsewhere (site license, full copy, ...).

On a technical level, you need to have your hard disk drivers available to the XP installer. Most modern systems need drivers that a plain XP install CD doesn't have. If you have downgrade rights, Toshiba may supply a suitable CD. Alternatively, you'll need to "slipstream" the drivers into a customised CD. The nLite program handles this very well.
--
Joseph Wright

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.