Installing XP and Vista

[2112Rush]

I'm having problems trying to install XP after Vista. So I'm going to get rid of Vista and install XP first then Vista. Two questions:

1 - Can I just format the drive that Vista is on to get rid of it? Or do I have to do a uninstall the
way it should be done?

2 - I have two HDD's. Can I put everything on the drive that Vista is not on? This way I won't
have to reinstall everything from my old rig? Will there be some Vista files that will get
saved this way and that will cause problems later on?

 

[2112Rush]

No one has any suggestions?

 

[Trashman]

Hey Rush,
1st thing, backup data files to your 2nd hard drive, you won't be able to transfer any installed programs on the Vista drive to your 2nd hard drive.
At least thats what i got out of this
"Will there be some Vista files that will get
saved this way and that will cause problems later on?"
With that out of the way, disconnect your 2nd. drive just to protect ya from formatting wrong drive, than boot with your XP cd and format and install.
Are you planning on partitioning the 1st hard drive so you can install Vista on same drive as XP or will you install Vista on that 2nd hard drive? If so than you will want to do that as well in XP setup.

 

[Trashman]

If your using SATA drives and BIOS is set in AHCI mode, than XP will not be able to detect your hard drives, you might have to download drivers depending on your chipset of motherboard, either to floppy or cd during the F6 option is when you'll need to install.
Something to check into or be prepared for just in case.

 

[2112Rush]

Thanks for the advice Trashman.
I was planning on putting them on separate drives. I saw something in another thread about partitioning drives to make them not work as hard. Would it be better to put them on separate drives or partition one drive for both?

I tried to install XP with Vista installed using a tutorial from a site.

I'm not even sure I need to load SATA drivers but hit F6 anyway. It asked for a disc for the drivers. I don't know where they would be so hit enter to continue. The I get a message saying installation stopped to avoid damaging the HD. It says to run CHKDSK /F. I tried running the program by typing CHKDSK in the search bar. The program icon is there, I click it and nothing happens. I got it to run eventually but the window xlosed when it was done and I didn't see the results. I didn't see it have any errors while it was going though.

Does that mean I need the drivers or do I have a disc problem? It seemed ok during the check.

The SATA drivers aren't normally on the MB disc?