Vista to XP

Hi,
My son bought a secondhand laptop recently which worked OK for a while but
then began flashing up messages that an illegal copy of Vista was installed.
He now has obtained a genuine XP disc but he is having trouble installing
it. I realise that going backwards is not as easy as updating.
Does Vista need to be un-installed before the XP disc can be used and if so
how? I'm trying to asertain how the machine can be put into such a condition
that the XP disc an be run and Windows XP installed.
Regards and TIA,
Alan.

Hi Alan,

He would have to boot the system from the installation disk and a) remove
the volume containing the Vista installation and then b) create a new one
from the resulting free space and format it. All data currently on that
drive will be lost. He cannot initiate the XP installation from within
Vista.

Incidentally, the messages could just indicate a system corruption and the
license is not necessarily illegitimate. He should run "slui 4" from the
start/search line and contact activation support.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
Vote for my shoe: http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Alan" <> wrote in message
news:%...
> Hi,
> My son bought a secondhand laptop recently which worked OK for a while but
> then began flashing up messages that an illegal copy of Vista was
> installed.
> He now has obtained a genuine XP disc but he is having trouble installing
> it. I realise that going backwards is not as easy as updating.
> Does Vista need to be un-installed before the XP disc can be used and if
> so how? I'm trying to asertain how the machine can be put into such a
> condition that the XP disc an be run and Windows XP installed.
> Regards and TIA,
> Alan.