I just finished successfully removing Vista from a new HP Pavilion a1520n and got it completely working with XP Home. Some of what I found may be unique to HP's specific setup, but what I learned may give others some clues about what to check to install XP on similar systems. Others are welcome to add their tips and experiences.
HP and Compaq no longer provide restore disks. Instead, their systems will create ONE set of disks which is bonded to the machine that creates them. Other companies may do the same. Therefore, before you start, make sure you have your restore disks. You may need to restore Vista for warranty service.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Before I started, I searched Google for the HP model number + install + XP. I found that a lot of people have tried to do it and failed on this particular machine.
One important thing I learned is that Vista does some strange things to the partition table.
1. How many hard drives do you see? On the HP, it showed two, one of which was used for restore purposes. If that's on yours, it has to go. See below for ways to do that.
2. In the CMOS, look to see if the drive is set for ATA or RAID. If it's set for RAID, change it to ATA.
I used Partition Magic, booting from a floppy, to remove them. As it was booting, the program gave me a message that something was wrong with the first partition and asked if I wanted it to fix the problem. I clicked "Yes," and that was the end of that problem. I could then remove both partitions and set up a single, active standard NTFS partition.
If you don't have Partition Magic, you can try delpart.exe. It's a genuine Microsoft utility from NT 4 that will allow you to nuke an NTFS partition from a bootable DOS floppy. I've used it, before, and it works, but I don't know if it will with Vista's partition setup.
In any case, the objective is to blow off all partitions created by Vista so XP sees a completely new, unpartitioned, unformatted drive that will allow you to create a new, standard NTFS partition.
You'll need drivers for the chipset and possibly other features on the motherboard. Find and download everything you'll need for XP, and burn it to a CD before you remove Vista. You should also download whatever firewall, spyware blockers and any other safety utilities you want and put them on the CD.
Then, when you install XP, do NOT activate it right away. That way, you'll be able to copy install your anti-virus and other safety programs before you ever hit the web to activate XP.
If you built your own machine from scratch, get the latest XP drivers from the manufacturer's site. If you have a department store computer (Compaq, Dell, HP, etc.), go to the manufacturer's site to look for any drivers, etc. that will work with XP. You may be able to find earlier models that were sold with XP using the exact same motherboard. If so, those drivers may work for your installation.
Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image will save your butt any number of ways. To avoid killing the machine, I installed XP on another drive and Ghosted it to the original drive only after I had it running. That way, I could test the installation before blowing off Vista.
Even if your current drive is SATA, you can build your installation on an old PATA drive and use Ghost to transfer it to a SATA drive once it's working. If you have two spare drives, you can Ghost your build as you get each step running. That way, if the next step fails, you can put it back to the last good point and try again. Running a good registry cleaner, such as Norton WinDoctor, Registry Mechanic, after installing each program can also help keep your build clean and solid.
HP and Compaq no longer provide restore disks. Instead, their systems will create ONE set of disks which is bonded to the machine that creates them. Other companies may do the same. Therefore, before you start, make sure you have your restore disks. You may need to restore Vista for warranty service.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Before I started, I searched Google for the HP model number + install + XP. I found that a lot of people have tried to do it and failed on this particular machine.
One important thing I learned is that Vista does some strange things to the partition table.
1. How many hard drives do you see? On the HP, it showed two, one of which was used for restore purposes. If that's on yours, it has to go. See below for ways to do that.
2. In the CMOS, look to see if the drive is set for ATA or RAID. If it's set for RAID, change it to ATA.
I used Partition Magic, booting from a floppy, to remove them. As it was booting, the program gave me a message that something was wrong with the first partition and asked if I wanted it to fix the problem. I clicked "Yes," and that was the end of that problem. I could then remove both partitions and set up a single, active standard NTFS partition.
If you don't have Partition Magic, you can try delpart.exe. It's a genuine Microsoft utility from NT 4 that will allow you to nuke an NTFS partition from a bootable DOS floppy. I've used it, before, and it works, but I don't know if it will with Vista's partition setup.
In any case, the objective is to blow off all partitions created by Vista so XP sees a completely new, unpartitioned, unformatted drive that will allow you to create a new, standard NTFS partition.
You'll need drivers for the chipset and possibly other features on the motherboard. Find and download everything you'll need for XP, and burn it to a CD before you remove Vista. You should also download whatever firewall, spyware blockers and any other safety utilities you want and put them on the CD.
Then, when you install XP, do NOT activate it right away. That way, you'll be able to copy install your anti-virus and other safety programs before you ever hit the web to activate XP.
If you built your own machine from scratch, get the latest XP drivers from the manufacturer's site. If you have a department store computer (Compaq, Dell, HP, etc.), go to the manufacturer's site to look for any drivers, etc. that will work with XP. You may be able to find earlier models that were sold with XP using the exact same motherboard. If so, those drivers may work for your installation.
Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image will save your butt any number of ways. To avoid killing the machine, I installed XP on another drive and Ghosted it to the original drive only after I had it running. That way, I could test the installation before blowing off Vista.
Even if your current drive is SATA, you can build your installation on an old PATA drive and use Ghost to transfer it to a SATA drive once it's working. If you have two spare drives, you can Ghost your build as you get each step running. That way, if the next step fails, you can put it back to the last good point and try again. Running a good registry cleaner, such as Norton WinDoctor, Registry Mechanic, after installing each program can also help keep your build clean and solid.
