downgrading

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??

"bman2409" wrote in message

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??

No. You have to format and reinstall XP, as it was clearly detailed in all the warnings prior to Vista installing.

So, I assume you have a single computer (no secondary test machine), and you tried to do an "Upgrade" of your system's original Windows XP? Bad, bad idea..
There is hope to save your old files and so forth, but you're going to have to buy a new hard drive and pull out your current one.
Reinstall/restore your original XP install disks onto the new hard drive, then put the corrupted Vista drive in as a secondary / slave drive. You can now manually copy off any really important files from your smushed-Vista drive onto the new drive.
Note that recovering any old Outlook Express or instant messenger settings files from the smushed Vista drive is going to be REALLY challenging, if you can do it at all. All your personal documents and data is going to be located in the "Documents and Settings" folder at the root of the drive..
Don't try the Vista Ugrade option unless you're doing it on a second, expendable machine or a have spare hard drive with XP installed, where if it blows up in your face you don't lose anything on your primary XP that you use for gaming, work, etc.
(Personally, I've made a drive image of a bare XP-SP2 install on a spare PC, so when Vista blowed up (twice now) I can just restore the XP drive image and immediately try it again..)

"bman2409" wrote:

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??

So, I assume you have a single computer (no secondary test machine), and you tried to do an "Upgrade" of your system's original Windows XP? Bad, bad idea..
There is hope to save your old files and so forth, but you're going to have to buy a new hard drive and pull out your current one.
Reinstall/restore your original XP install disks onto the new hard drive, then put the corrupted Vista drive in as a secondary / slave drive. You can now manually copy off any really important files from your smushed-Vista drive onto the new drive.
Note that recovering any old Outlook Express or instant messenger settings files from the smushed Vista drive is going to be REALLY challenging, if you can do it at all. All your personal documents and data is going to be located in the "Documents and Settings" folder at the root of the drive..
Don't try the Vista Ugrade option unless you're doing it on a second, expendable machine or a have spare hard drive with XP installed, where if it blows up in your face you don't lose anything on your primary XP that you use for gaming, work, etc.
(Personally, I've made a drive image of a bare XP-SP2 install on a spare PC, so when Vista blowed up (twice now) I can just restore the XP drive image and immediately try it again..)

"bman2409" wrote:

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??

Sorry, you didn't install a program, you overwrote your operating system. Back-up what you want to save, then reformat and clean install.
"bman2409" wrote:

I was wondering if any one can tell me if there is a way to downgrade from Vista back to XP without losing all my current files??