 In Dire Need Of Help.... |
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 May 1 2007, 10:47 PM
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Member  Group: Members Posts: 16 Joined: 23-April 07 Member No.: 126,585  |
 Here is my problem, bear with me now! A few weeks back, I upgraded XP to Vista with a disk my brother got with his new laptop which is installed with Vista. My laptop worked kinda funky with Vista, but none the less worked. Well once the two week period was up, I decided I did not want to keep Vista and wanted to go back to XP. I thought this would be a simple process, boy have I been wrong! So when I go to logon to windows, I get to my login screen and enter my password and it acts like it is loading. It soon comes to a screen telling my copy of Windows is not genuine and I need to either log off or run windows with a limited function. Well I click that and all it does is load up Internet Explorer so I can purchase a cd key for Vista. It does not have a task bar or a start menu on the bottom left hand corner! It's just the explorer, oddly enough I am able to surf the net, but nothing else. So...I do not want to purchase a cd key, I just want to get rid of Vista and back to XP. It sounds like the easiest way to do this is to just format my drive and use the recovery disk, which I want to do. Here is all I have tried so far... -Loaded up in Safe mode and tried to format the drive through the computer management program, does not work, will not let me format. -I have changed the boot menu to a couple of times for a few different possible combinations to try to get the restore cd to format the drive for me like it says. It does not work. On the disk case it tells me to put cd in the drive, turn off the computer, then reboot, while it is booting up hold down the c key until it gets to the toshiba screen and it should begin the formatting process and eventually reinstall of XP. This does not happen. Usually nothing happens, or I get an I/O error. -I went into safe mode to make sure the disk is working, it is, when I try to run the disk, it says something about not being able to recognize the current OS. Have no clue why, It must be a Vista thing. -I have tried going into DOS to try to format-gives me a message about not being able to delete partition. I am at my wits end, I have no clue what to do, it is frustrating, I am to the point of buying a new computer, which I do not need as my current laptop is great and has better specs that most new ones that are out and I would rather not waste money on buying a key for Vista or blowing 200 bucks to have a company wipe my hard drive for me. I would really appeciate any help you guys would have for me..please! |
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May 2 2007, 04:20 AM
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Forum Regular Group: Validating Posts: 224 Joined: 18-January 07 Member No.: 106,976 |
Boot your XP CD
Boot into recovery console by pressing "R" . Type command "FIXBOOT C:" (No speech marks) Next type "FIXMBR", read serious warning messages and press "Y" to continue Exit and reboot. Finally edit Boot.ini and delete line with "Longhorn" or "Vista" on it and delete the folder Vista resides in. If that does not work, try another way: Boot your computer in to Windows XP. Ensure you have the Vista DVD in the DVD drive. Go to “Start” and “Run”. Type in “d:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force” (without quotes, plus replace e: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD). Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone. Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed. Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP root folder (C:).. |
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