Newbie to site - Vista uninstall help needed

Hi all

I'm hoping someone out there can help me.

Background: I'm currently the one and only techie minded person in my
company of 35 people, we run a 2003 server and XP pro on all the
desktops.

Problem: In someone's infinite wisdom, whilst I was on leave last
week, someone purchased 3 new laptops for the company that came shipped
with Vista Home Basic. This is not compatible with our domain system
(as I've just spent all day finding out).

So my question is HOW do I wipe Vista off these machines? When I put
in my XP pro disk it doesn't recognise it and comes up with an error
and won't let me even start the format/install process.

Any help (preferably in words of one syllable) would be welcome!

Lucy


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LucyB wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I'm hoping someone out there can help me.
>
> Background: I'm currently the one and only techie minded person in my
> company of 35 people, we run a 2003 server and XP pro on all the
> desktops.
>
> Problem: In someone's infinite wisdom, whilst I was on leave last
> week, someone purchased 3 new laptops for the company that came shipped
> with Vista Home Basic. This is not compatible with our domain system
> (as I've just spent all day finding out).
>
> So my question is HOW do I wipe Vista off these machines? When I put
> in my XP pro disk it doesn't recognise it and comes up with an error
> and won't let me even start the format/install process.
>
> Any help (preferably in words of one syllable) would be welcome!

Hi, Lucy - Contact the laptop mftr. or the company from which you
purchased the machines. They may be willing to send you restore/drivers
disks for XP in exchange for the Vista ones. If they don't use a restore
disk method to return the machines to factory condition, they will know
if those laptops will support XP. Many laptops do not because the laptop
mftr. does not have XP drivers available. Without XP drivers, running
that operating system on the laptops will be impossible. Depending on
the answers, you may wish to simply return the machines and purchase
ones running the correct operating system for your needs - either XP Pro
or Vista Business/Ultimate. The company from which you purchased the
machines may also have suggestions about doing an upgrade from Vista
Home to Business/Ultimate and still staying within your warranty.

As to why your XP Pro disk doesn't work, since you didn't give details
about the disk or the error message, I can only guess that perhaps this
is an OEM XP Pro disk from a company like Dell which is BIOS-locked to
the OEM motherboard. This means that the install CD is looking for a
Dell (for ex.) motherboard and will fail when it doesn't find one. You
should be able to install with a full retail or generic XP disk but
again, you need to make sure drivers and laptop-specific software are
available for XP before you do this.

I'm sorry my reply wasn't "in words of one syllable" but if there was
anything you didn't understand, please post back and I'll do my best to
explain better.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User