Downgrading Windows Vista to Windows Xp on a Acer Laptop
This was done on a Acer Travelmate 5720, this laptop comes with Windows Vista Buisness and so a downgrade to Windows XP, this tutorial should work on nearly all Acer laptops with the downgrade disks included however has only being done on the Travelmate 5720, there are no guarentees that other laptops will use the identical process however this should give you a rough idea of the process required to downgrade, no responsibility is taken if something goes wrong when following these instructions, I have only done this once...
Booting the computer the first time
Firstly turn on the laptop.
When the prompt for the Country/Language appears enter the correct details.
Next you will be presented with the license agreements, accept them(after reading them carefully of cause).
Next you will be asked to enter the date and time information.
After this you will be asked some information like names and passwords, fill these in using the onscreen instructions.
Once this has being done the computer may or may not install some other software such as anti virus software, wait until this is done.
It will/may then perform operations such as checking the PC’s configuration.
It will then reboot the computer, after reboot allow it to perform any actions it wants to.
You are now at the position where you can remove Vista and install XP, however if you do this now you will never be able to return back to Vista in the future. To overcome this issue and to have a “safety net” for if something goes wrong you should create a Vista Factory Default Disk. To do this follow the instructions below, if you would prefer not to do this then skip to the Installing XP section.
Creating Vista Factory Default Disks
Once the computer has booted up select the E-recovery Management application, this will either be present in the onscreen bar displayed with a large “e” at the side, will be in the start menu or in the control pad that has being presented.
Once you have selected the E-recovery management application a screen will appear, select the burn DVD/CD button at the bottom of the screen.
Now choose the burn Factory Default Disks option.
This will ask you to confirm that you want to burn the disks and tell you how many you need, insert blank DVD’s/CD’s as requested, carefully labelling and numbering them, usually 2 DVD’s are required.
Once this is done you can start to remove Vista and return to XP.
Installing XP
To do this reboot the computer, when the computer reboots enter the BIOS, this is usually done by clicking F12.
When you are in the bios navigate to the tab labelled BOOT by using the left and right arrow keys.
Now you have to change the boot order so that the DVD/CD drive boots first(is at the top), this is usually done by highlighting the CD/DVD drive by using the UP/DOWN arrow keys. Once the Drive has being selected the priority is usually changed by using the F6 button. As these keys can change read the instructions in the BIOS screen for how to change priority.
Once you have changed the CD/DVD drive to have the first boot priority open the CD/DVD draw and insert the disk labelled Formatter Disk.
Now you can save and exit the BIOS, this is usually done using F10 but again look at the instructions that are onscreen.
The computer will now reboot, after rebooting it should load into a application that is used to format the HDD. The application will ask you to confirm that you want to format the drive. Once you click OK on this screen VISTA will be removed.
After clicking OK you will have to wait a minute or two for it to format the HDD.
After a few minutes it will ask you to insert the Restore DVD/CD into the drive, once you have done this it will start copying data to the HDD. This will take a while.
Once the onscreen prompt requests you to insert the system disk DVD into the drive.
The computer will then reboot. The system will load up and ask you information such as usernames and password, follow the onscreen instructions.
You now have a copy of XP installed. Now you just need to go download a copy of Ubuntu to replace XP with an even better operating system.
ENJOY
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NOTE: These articles are tutorials/general ramblings. I do not except responsibility for anything that goes wrong, be it a broken HDD, an entire computer or if you chop off your arms, follow anything I say on this site at your own risk.
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