Removing Windows Vista

[Canadian Tech]

Hi Guys,

I had a strange question and I know it can be done but can you guys tell me if you remove Windows Vista and install Windows XP will vista still be there, or any portion of it? I had a customer tell me that she was told that you can't remove vista completely. Is this true, I never heard of it. I have installed Windows XP enough times to know that it will wipe out anything on the hard drive but I never heard of this before. I know i'm sorry its a dumb question but thought I would pass it by you.

 

[abe]

there will be no parts of anything left on the drive after the format that would interfere, but you would be able to recover data that was written using getdataback or something similar,
in short nothing noticble will be left. what will be left is anything tha would be left from any operating system.

edit: unless she/he means a hidden recovery partition
Abe

 

[Canadian Tech]

LOL...I'm not sure but I forgot about that partition myself. I must be tired when I forget stupid things like that. This customer was told by another tech that they can not completely remove vista from the system and that they would have to stick with it. She hates it and wants to go to XP. I knew the installation would get rid of everything but never heard of any part of it being left behind.

 

[angry_geek]

The other tech might have said that based on driver availability from the OEM or she doesn't have a valid copy of Win XP. I could be wrong, but I think only business or ultimate can be legally downgraded. I always get the drivers from the various component manufacturers if I can't find them on the OEM site.

There is also the good chance that the other tech works at Domino's.

 

[Canadian Tech]

This was an email that I recieved so I hadn't actually talked to the customer but she did say she's had Vista for 2 years. She didn't say if it was a laptop or desktop, not that it makes a difference. I'm assuming its a name brand system but for all I know it could be custom built by Dominos. Lets face it any tech should be able to find drivers, right? I just don't understand why someone would tell her it can't be done and that vista would still be there.

 

[JRDtechnet]

This was an email that I recieved so I hadn't actually talked to the customer but she did say she's had Vista for 2 years. She didn't say if it was a laptop or desktop, not that it makes a difference. I'm assuming its a name brand system but for all I know it could be custom built by Dominos. Lets face it any tech should be able to find drivers, right? I just don't understand why someone would tell her it can't be done and that vista would still be there.

Did you ask her what she doesn't like about Vista? If its 2-years old there's a chance she's been ignoring the service pack updates or she bought a system with >1gb of ram. I would ask her what specifically she doesn't like about it.

As for why the other tech would tell her that XP would still be on there perhaps he was planning to install XP over Vista so he didn't have to backup the data first.

 

[iptech]

It sound like someone's been feeding her bs to me. Ask her what is it with Vista that's she's so unhappy with and offer to fix that before you go for a nuke. I've not known of a pizza tech yet who's not been able to nuke al traces of an operating system, it's what they do best.

 

[Canadian Tech]

It sound like someone's been feeding her bs to me. Ask her what is it with Vista that's she's so unhappy with and offer to fix that before you go for a nuke. I've not known of a pizza tech yet who's not been able to nuke al traces of an operating system, it's what they do best.

LMAO...I guess that tech can't be a pizza tech. He doesn't even live up to their standards. Especially if he can't remove an operating system.
I honestly thought I had a brain fart because I never heard of on operating system not being completely removed when you do a reinstall.

 

[purple_minion]

I think the real issue is if it's a new system finding drivers may be troublesome. A lot don't write drivers for old OS's like XP. I have heard that you may be able to hunt and peck for drivers for individual components like chipset, lan, etc but it can be a lot of work and there are no guarantees. Could be a big headache with no results.

 

[ithinkyou5.0]

you can hunt down drivers indivudaly from intel, realteck etc but its a pain in the ass, couple of times of doing this and i just gave up. if the vendore dosnt supply driver disk/ easly downloaded drivers for the system i wouldnt bother. find out what system she is running and find out specificaly what it is that she is having trouble with under vista. s for vista being left behind when you re-install thats rubbish. when you install windows xp it overrights the c > windows folder and everything in it and thats if you dont reformat, if you reformat there's nothing left on the drive that can be read in any normal way. tbh vista isnt so bad once you get it set up right. ive never had a customer complain once sp1 + at least a gig of ram is installed.

 

[Canadian Tech]

Although drivers can be a pain to find the majority of drivers are already built into Win XP. That doesn't mean to say that I won't come across a driver that isn't found. It may not be worth doing it but why lie to a customer and say it can't be done at all. If I hear from her again I will explain to her that finding the correct drivers might be more bother then its worth. I thought it was rubbish that she would be told that.

 

[purple_minion]

I am still listening to the backlog of podnutz shows, but Steve on there said he had good luck with using driverpacks slipstreamed into the install CD when downgrading vista to xp. He said he only had a thumbprint driver to install and a card reader. He said it was pretty painless versus manually hunting them down.

He also had a good story from a listener about a Best Buy saleperson telling a customer if he didn't buy 2GB of ram with a vista machine the CPU would burn up which wasn't covered under warrenty.

 

[Canadian Tech]

He also had a good story from a listener about a Best Buy saleperson telling a customer if he didn't buy 2GB of ram with a vista machine the CPU would burn up which wasn't covered under warrenty.

That doesn't surprise me

 

[Canadian Tech]

UPDATE: customer only communicates through email so to get her to respond is very slow. It seems that she has a Compaq system and it only has 512mb of RAM. Regardless is she wants xp or not I would still recommend at least 1GB of RAM. Her only complaint with vista is it runs really slow. Well no wonder...lol.

 

[iptech]

Under the circumstance I would advise her to stick with Vista but with a RAM upgrade to 2GB and Service pack 2.

Changing the OS will be more costly and she ideally would still need to upgrade the RAM.

 

[Edge Tech NY]

I think the real issue is if it's a new system finding drivers may be troublesome. A lot don't write drivers for old OS's like XP. I have heard that you may be able to hunt and peck for drivers for individual components like chipset, lan, etc but it can be a lot of work and there are no guarantees. Could be a big headache with no results.

I agree, found this problem on a few newer computers..

 

[Canadian Tech]

I told her that she should stick with vista and even if she downgraded to XP I would still recommend a memory upgrade. She was happy with that and said she will call me after she gets back from holidays. I'm not sure what version of vista she had but 512mb is the bare minimum requirements.