BleepingComputer.com: Erasing Vista And Installing Xp

I bought my wife an emachine model # w3629 for Christmas, and I can not find one single thing I like about Vista or any of the dozens of junk trial edition programs and games that were preinstalled on this machine. So I purchased a full windows XP Media Cnter edition, sp2b to install on her computer. I know enough about computers to get me in trouble, but some of the acronyms I don't understand, and don't have time to research. I am ready to install this OS, but after doing a little research I found that some forums talk about backup SATA drives and all kinds of crap. Do I need all of this stuff?

What I want to do is:
Erase Vista entirely
remove all partitions on the hard drive
Install XP and be happy.

How do I do this?
Please explain in layman's terms

All you need to do is use the CD/DVD you bought with XP on it and install it but if it asks you to do a dual boot answer no. Backup SATA hard drives means using a external hard drive backing up anything you want to keep because by installing XP you are formatting the hard drive which deletes everything on it so if there is anything on the hard drive you want you need to use a external hard drive/thumb drive/CDs/DVDs

If you install XP and don't have the SATA drivers there is a chance that your system won't recognize your hard drive (because the SATA drivers are necessary for Windows to operate on your hard drive.

FWIW - installing XP will also void your eMachines warranty.

I set the computer to boot from the disk drive, then installed XP media center.
I have problems though... Halfway through the installation it asks for XP Professional service pack 2 disk. I thought I had the sp2 edition. So my mother in law got me a copy from her work of the windows XP service pack 2 for xp home, pro, media center, and pc. I inserted this disk, and it did not recognize it as the SP2 disk it was looking for. It said can not locate IEXPLORE.... SO I finished the installation anyway and then installed the sp2.

Now, I have 2 more problems. There are no icons on the desktop until I switch to classic view. The internet explorer icon does not work. When I click on it it brings up the " open with " window. Obviously because it previously told me that it could not find IEXPLORE.

The other problem is when I run the Media center updates disk that came from microsoft with the 2 install disks, I get an error:
MCInstaller.exe - Unable to locate component
This application has failed to start because SRCLIENT.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

What is going on here?

cplkittle,

My story is almost equal to yours...i found nothing to like about Vista, so I switched back to Windows XP Media Center edition. And, just like you during the installation, after discs one and two, it asked for the service pack 2 disk, which i obviously didn't have, so I just decided to skip it, and it then finished the installation and everything seems alright, but just like you when I insert the 2005 update disc, the same MCInstaller error comes up.

In addition, my big problem is that I cannot get the computer to recognize my internal wireless PCI card. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the driver for it and it says that it is working properly, only it's NOT! In fact, none of my networking stuff shows up. I go to Network Places and there is nothing, no LAN, no WLAN, no anything.

I know your post was back in January...did you ever find a solution?

Ben

hmm your problem is very intresting NOW..Format your drive