New laptop has Vista. I want to format and install WinXP. Should I anticipate any issues like missing drivers for the cd/dvd drive or any other oddities?

Anything you can think of that I need to bear in mind before I take the plunge?

Thanks.

Curlyben

As XP is mature you should be fine.
My Dell XPS came with Vista, so I nuked it and installed XP Pro with no problems.

Obviously once you have XP installed make sure it is fully patched and the drivers are updated.

NeedKarma

Side note: I am currently double-booting Ubuntu and XP. I have attained a new level of geekness.

Curlyben

Keep going NK.
My desktop has XP Pro, Vista Business and Fedora Core

RickJ

stumped already. I inserted the xp disk and have 3 options.

1. install xp
2. perform other tasks
3. check compatibility

#1 is grayed out so I cant click it. #3 just points to windowsmarketplace.com, which is no help.

can you point me to the idiots guide to installing windows xp? It's been ages since I've used anything other than a manuf. restore disk...

RickJ

Geez...I see I"m not alone, and the solution does not seem simple:Vista uninstallation - CNET Windows Vista Forums

Ben, is there an easy way to do this?

...the more I read the more I see that I may not be geeky enough to do it

Matt3046

Doesn't it fill up your hard drive? I have not had much problem with Vista, only that some devices and software will not work. Not much but a couple of things. so for this I had to get out the old desktop, (what a drag.)

NeedKarma

Matt,
My Ubuntu OS take much less room than I anticipated, in fact I need to free up it's partition I allocated and give it back to Windows. I have a second hard drive (120GB) so space isn't an issue. I can see where having XP and Vista would be an issue though.

Matt3046

Yes Vista is a real hog, on all the system resources. Whats the Ubuntu used for?

Curlyben

Rick, it's really simple.
You need to boot on to your XP CD and go from there.
Make sure you delete the current partitions and format.