Computers & Networking

[Goku1981]

My mother bought a Sony Vaio Laptop from Best Buy and it had Windows Vista preinstalled with no discs.  I made a full system restore disc after she got it but she really seems to dislike Vista and I was wondering what could be done to have Windows XP installed on the laptop instead of Vista when the vista install will need to be reinstalled.  Any advice or help would be appretiated.

[hockeycanuckjc Trusted Contributor]

Be aware that a Vista laptop can be hard to get the Xp drivers for... if you can buy a full copy of xp that is............. there are other hardships involved in this....

[Sassums]

Also keep in mind that if you remove Vista, the recovery disks will not work, as they require a version of vista already on the machine.

[Matthew-GS Retired: Community Advocate]

Welcome, Goku1981!

I can really sympathize with what she is experiencing.  What does she dislike about Vista?  I was an early beta-tester with Vista so I have enjoyed it for a while.  What many people are unaware of are the enhanced security features and the ability to use "Windows Classic" theme so that it looks like the old style Windows without loosing all of Vista features.  Many times it is a matter of sitting down with a computer user and illustrating how to be productive in new software.  

Just last week I posted about the  Mojave Experiment. Check it out! 

Meanwhile, I agree with the other posts, but I have had XP co-installed (known as "dual-boot") with Vista. It is not to be taken lightly and usually requires purchasing full versions of Windows.  Check your manufacturer warranty before performing any alternative OS installations.

Goku1981, please send me a private message if you would like me to lend further assitance with changing Vista settings to work for her (click my name and select "send user a message" from following screen).  Alternately, check with your local Geek Squad if you would like help installing XP, etc. 

[Ron]

Hi Goku1981,

Downgrading the operating system is definetely not recommended.  Like Matthew said, you can change it to classic view this will save on performance and give that not so eye candy look of XP.

[lordkirivos]

I have an acer laptop that came with vista, but being an A+ technician you really need to know what you are doing, I have done a lot of research into converting the operating system to XP but I found that alot of the features that run under Vista won't run under XP so I set up a dual boot because I have some programs that won't run under vista, but hey if you try it good luck

[BBBob]

I do not reccommend down grading the operating system at all. I would go to the Sony web site and see if they have any drivers for XP for the model Sony you have. They probably do not. If you install XP and there are no drivers you now have a boat anchor rather than a computer. You can search in device manager and get the name of the hardware and go to the makers of all the different hardware and see if they offer drivers for them. I will bet you they do not.

Why will you not attempt to learn a new system? If you will take a little time you will find that Vista is not that bad. It is different and we do not like change. I have a 2 year old desk top and it runs on Xp and my wife has a Dell laptop that runs on Vista. I have messed with Vista and it is not that hard or trouble some to me. My wife likes it and she works for the college district here and they switched to Vista about 6 months ago. They are doing fine with it. I think you just need to take a little time to learn the system and you will like it.

Bob

[someoneenoemos]

You did a very smart thing by creating recovery disks for the Sony.. It is the very first thing you should do on any sony, hp or now toshiba or others that put them on a recovery partition.. Another tip on Sony, if you hit the 'F10' on bootup.. it will bring up the recovery program to recover the system, though it does no good if that partition is bad as well.. 'F11' for HP's

As far as going to XP, good luck with that, although if you were lucky enough to buy a Sony SR240, Z550 or maybe a Z520 and did not have a "Xp recovery disk" in the box, you can contact Sony so they can send you one..  There may be other models as well under that program, but they are primarily SR or Z-series models.