I recently purchased a new computer that came with Vista Home already on the hard drive. I've been using it for about a week now and Vista has been nothing but a huge headache. I have a copy of XP Home SP2 that I tried to install but I'm having problems. I tried to install it by setting the CDROM drive as the first boot device, and at first it looked like it was going ok. It booted the CD and windows began the Hardware Configuration Inspection, it went through all that, then continued into the Windows Setup screen (still just the text screens, no graphics/icons). About 2 seconds after it got there it crashed with a blue screen. I tried this several times and got the same result. Can somebody help me PLEASE. I just want to get rid of this OS....
Download something like UBCD and use the drive partitioning tools.. that will kill vista really quickly. Just make sure there isn't a manufacturers bios partition. You may have some troubles finding drivers so make a complete list of the hardware first
I've got the hardware list covered. How can I check if there's a manufacteurers bios partition though? I'm actually fairly sure there is one though because it's a 320GB hard drive and in My Computer it only shows 288GB of space on the drive. The bios partition would hold the OS before it was actually installed right? When I got it out of the box it had to load Vista on the first startup.
First question... how much ram in computer? Second question... did this crash happen after install? If you have more than 2 gig of ram (a 4 gig kit), remove one of the two and it should finish installing. There are two ways of fixing this after install. First is service pack 1 for vista, the second is getting the patch from Microsoft. Just do a google search for 4gig vista patch, and you should be okay. This ought to fix some of the install problems, if it's what I think it is. Now fixing vista? If your the ONLY ONE using your computer, here's how you can solve game, and or major software installation problems. Hit the F1 key and type in these three letters: UAC - it stands for user access controller. Think of this as an advanced version of how xp pro sets up admin, and clients; the difference is that your OS is literally, dare I say this, being a master control program (My apologizes for the Tron reference). From here it should give you the option of shutting this down. By doing so you turn Vista into XP pro. However if you are not the only user, you'll be needing to F1 and type in how to setup user access. Beyond this; it ought to solve a whole lots of headaches real fast! When I did this... I decided to start torturing myself into trying to get DOS games to work next. As far as removing Vista completely goes... depends on what you've got disc wise. If you have a retail copy of xp home or pro you ought to be able erase the partition / HDD of it completely. (Just be careful when doing this! You could end up wiping everything off the hard drive!) I've done so with my copy, and I will admit I hated Vista until I found out about what I just typed. I don't know for sure if it will work with an OEM disc, I'm pretty sure its the same thing, and dittos for anything using a recovery partition already in place. What I'm saying here I believe the same applies as with the retail copy. Hope this helps.
The computer has 2GB of RAM, and the crash happened during the install. I tried the F1 option during startuip but it didn't give me the option of typing anything. Only selecting Windows Vista Startup or the Memory Diagnostic Tool.
I've tried some other stuff here too... The computer does in fact have a factory partition. I formatted the rest of the HDD to NTFS using Parted Magic and tried to load XP after that but still got the BSOD showing this message: A problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If the screen appears again, follow these steps: Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK/F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer. Technical Information: *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) So... I reinstalled Vista via the recovery partition and decided to test the Ram. I'm using two 1GB sticks which both test good using Memtest. Not sure where to go from here... Still want to get XP on there.
a blue screen of death error... did you use the partition on your hdd to wipe it clean, did you use the disc, or partition magic? Odds are your ram isn't causing the issue here, I think it could be the hard drive, but I don't have enough information to say yes it is.
I used Parted Magic to Format, then resarted and tried to load XP on the preformatted drive using the CD
by using partition magic you might have also wiped out the recovery partition that is built in that is if this is an out of the box unit. If you had this software do a full format that was unnecessary as any xp disc can do that for you; whether it be a recovery disc, oem, or retail box I just recently ran a test on a laptop that will support vista, and did all these methods just as reference check. However this isn't the point, if partition magic deleted it for you use the xp disc and make sure that the program isn't leaving any after effects on the HDD... have it delete any and all data, and then install. It may have given you this issue by doing this preformat, unlikely but possible. If this fails try switching out to another hard drive altogether, throw xp on it and just get enough running that you can go into control panel use computer management, and go into disc management to really wipe that sucker clean! If for some reason on the second drive it gives you have same problem... I would guess next to check bios configuration and see which drive its trying to load from. If your using sata port 1, in bios under advanced settings the first or second boot device should be listed as hdd=0, if so then your okay, but if not then its trying to read from another sata port. IF your using an ide drive your going to have to consult your mobo manual as to how to switch around the ide to be the primary drives. Since the industry started making their computers with sata drives mobo manufacturer's have followed suit in making sata as the primary device for booting, and ide as the secondary. It won't be hard. By the way what was the issue you were having with vista?
No offense but I asked about what issue he was having with vista out of concern that if his issue with xp is the same... then I can determine this to be more hardware oriented. I've been talking with some my working buds about the issue jools has been having. Some of them are worried, its sounds like this is an out of the box system, which is the one thing I didn't consider. (my bad.) As jools has reinstalled vista, I wanted to see if I couldn't get this fixed too... problem is this sounds like more and more an out of the box computer. If its not one that has upgrade rights then the only way he can properly install xp is by getting xp drivers, installing and trying to get into safe mode to do up the drivers. From what I hear compaq, hp, and acer systems have been rather anal about xp being put onas the new core operating system. However, you can install xp, but vista will have to stay on the system. Whenever you boot up its will give you the option to select which one you want. If they are the same, and this is a custom build, then its no longer the hdd but the mobo... if reformatting didn't work and if jools is certain that the hdd is good then its means either a bad sata controller, bad ram slots, or a bad cpu slot. As I said odds were the ram is good unless its a generic brand like a-data, centon, or pny. I apologize again to you jools for not asking sooner about this system.
the acer system i worked on upgrading from vista to xp home was a brand new system that i set up for the customer for the 1st time. when i left 2 hrs later, i knew i was coming back to put xp on because of hardware incompatible problems & they did not like vista. i deleted all partitions & made 1 main partition then installed xp.
Beware.. some new hardware now has a "vista only" bios... it will not boot anything else without flashing the bios with a hardware manufacturers alternative, even if that means going back a few revisions.
vista only...? Hmmm... haven't heard about that one yet. I'll have to definitely check into that one, I didn't think that the bios would have any effect with any operating systems. Although in some aspects in does make common sense to flash the bios either way. That does bring up a very valid point though, Jools1976 when was this machine purchased? If varnull's is right then this is indeed another alternative... How sure of you are you about this Varnull? The only thing I'm aware of that would give xp any problems as far as installation goes is the 3gb buffer. If you have 8gb of ram it won't install, ever unless you remove some ram. Other than this I know of no other reason why xp shouldn't install other than bad components. Because usually bios is not designed for such advanced aspects. Locking out an operating system is rather far fetched in my opinion.
i've ran into that os specific bios last year when trying to load xp pro without a sp on it & it wouldn't install but w2k without sp would. figure that out.
Alright. I seemed to have got it. I followed the directions in this link that was pointed out to me: http://www.nonoh.com/20080502/pre-vi...lation-on-sata I used nLite to create an Xp disc that had the SATA drivers included. Worked like a charm. FYI I did pre-format the HDD using Parted Magic (keeping the recovery partition intact in case it didn't work, or there were driver issues down the road...). Now I'm just missing a few drivers : coprocessor ethernet controller PCI Device SM Bus Controller Video Controller (VGA Compatible) Thanks for all your help guys! Keep up the good work!
cool, just get yourself online from another source, and get those drivers. I will gladly state I was wrong about the partition magic. Oh about the whole bios lockout thing... turns out it isn't a lock out; they completely pulled the coding out for the OS that is considered obsolete. Key word here is considered, looks like there is a flash fix; just like what was done when the quad intel cores came out, but once a 2nd service pack for vista gets released you can kiss using xp goodbye unless you plan writing the coding yourself. Bios is a basic input output system. Therefore how the eeprom is setup is what you'll be dealing with, plus the design base of the OS kernel. In other words the reason why is because the kernel for vista is nearly identical to win2k. Although both the 2000 and the xp are about the same, unfortunately its the base code that's the difference; this is why a win2k disc will work, and why an xp won't... The minor differences; they used xp to super size 2000... they pulled the gui, the memory config, and one or two other behind the scene applications out; funny how they called this longhorn because in a literal sense all they did was put one OS on top of another. They couldn't use xp to do this for one simple reason, one Microsoft soon realized was going to happen no matter what they did. Think about how would you go about making; a better car or suv, use the mistakes that were made to create something better, faster, stronger, and hopefully with less bugs. In microsoft's case, can we say windows me, aka mistake edition? They didn't want to repeat history, which is why when Microsoft created xp they used 2000... if it isn't broken, don't fix it. Keep using it until you find the right way to make it better.
