Downgrade from Vista to WindowsXP

I have a refurbed Gateway laptop that came with Windows Vista Home Premium installed. I would like to remove Vista and install WindowsXP Pro - SP2. Vista will not allow the downgrade. Do you know a way around this? Thanks. D. Williamson

Do you have an original XP install disk? You will need to boot to that CD and format the HD before installing XP. However, you should make sure you have current XP drivers for the laptop first. Also, understand that rolling back to a 6 year old operating system is also rolling back all the advances in security Vista has to offer. Considering today's security environment the badguys have put us in, that may not be the best thing to do.

Thank you for the advice. I have an original XP CD and the laptop came with a CD with Vista on it. I suppose I could restore the original Vista system if necessary. I have become very familiar with XP Pro and hate to give it up. I've been told that Vista is still a can of worms in many cases. It seems to run much slower than XP. I sort of hate to have to go through the learning curve for another new OS. Dr. Dave

I sort of hate to have to go through the learning curve for another new OS.

The price of new technology.

Lmfao I find it hilarious that Windows go through the effort to make it impossible for you to do as you wish. My friend purchased a brand-new laptop with Windows Vista on it, and all it seemed capable of doing is popping up messages telling him that he's unable to install this piece of software I respect your decision Drgoodbones as I've never been a vista fan myself. I don't know….maybe I just have an obsession with 'old-school'

Thanks for the advice, folks. I found out what I have to do to downgrade back to XP. First, I have to boot from the installation CD … not just pop it in and run "Setup.exe". Then I have to let it reformat the drive. Before doing that I need to make sure that I have all the drivers for that computer in case XP doesn't have them. In order to allow Vista to run efficiently, it needs at least 2 meg of RAM I've been told. I have XP I can install, and I know it. It's finally become reasonably stable, and I keep hearing bad reports about VISTA.