How to Downgrade from Vista to XP

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Fed up with Vista? Here are step-by-step instructions for downgrading back to the warm familiarity of Windows XP.

by David A. Karp

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If "buyer's remorse" describes regret and self-doubt after a costly purchase, then "upgrader's remorse" seems to sum up the feelings some people have after switching to Windows Vista.

And why shouldn't they feel that way? Windows XP is noticeably faster than Vista on the same hardware, and it gets by with much less RAM and hard drive space. Microsoft's Service Pack 3 makes XP even faster, but the same cannot be said of Vista's Service Pack 1. And Windows Explorer crashes far more often in Vista (preceded, of course, by the notorious Green Ribbon of Death). Why, XP's staggeringly superior hardware support alone makes a convincing case for dumping Vista in favor of its predecessor.

Problem is, downgrading a Vista PC to Windows XP can be a chore, and doubly so if you want to do it without reformatting your hard disk. The main roadblock is Windows Setup, which won't let you install an older version on top of a newer one; you are left with the tedious task of fooling Setup into thinking that there's no Windows at all on your PC.—Next: Regress Without Reformatting >