Downgrading from Windows 7/Vista to XP…

With new technology emerging every day, there is always a need for one to keep updated. But while most of us tend to embrace every new innovation, some folks have decided to remain old school. It, largely, is the reason you’ll find people striving so hard to downgrade newly acquired machines from the all new windows 7 to XP. Others could do so because of application incompatibility (for some applications developed before the advent of windows Vista & 7 and have not been updated since), but majority fall in the former category.

For the change-resistant folks, this might sound like good news but the whole process isn’t as easily as it sounds. Several factors need to be put into consideration, and a quick run-through for the major ones is highlighted below;

Laptop Type/brand: For starters, most new notebooks come pre-installed with Windows 7 irrespective of the brand, whether Dell, HP or otherwise. For some brands, the downgrade process is as simple as inserting a windows XP installation CD and restarting the machine, from whence the installation media is detected. One can choose to start the downgrade process from here. One assumption, of course, being taken here, is that the DVD-ROM is configured as one of the boot devices. For other brands, the process is quite long, and is explained in the latter sections of this article.

XP Drivers: This, usually, presents the biggest challenge to downgraded PCs. Having successfully downgraded to XP doesn’t necessarily grant you automatic access to windows XP drivers for your machine. I once downgraded an HP notebook successfully, only to go to their (HP) website and be told there were no corresponding drivers for the same machine. One ought to be aware of which drivers are readily available, and which ones they can afford to do without (In case they cannot get the said drivers, such as wireless & sound) 

The Cautious Approach:

Don’t wipe the Hard Disk Drive first, because you don't know if you are going to be able to fully get XP to work, or if you will be able to get the SATA drivers for your XP disc to slip stream it with the correct SATA drivers. Also, video, sound, Wi-Fi, Ethernet drivers could be some of the drivers that you may not readily find.

Instead of FORMATTING, download gParted (Genome Partitioning Tool). It’s a freeware ISO image that you get to burn to a blank CD-R, and then boot your pc.

Once you get to boot your computer, simply do the following to test out Windows XP WITHOUT risking losing your existing Windows 7 installation in case if you have to go back for any reason (missing XP drivers, etc.)

Resize the primary (main) partition (the largest one you will find, NOT the restore one (if any) taking away, like 20 GB. You will have 20GB of unallocated space that you get to use to create a new partition there.

Right click on the 20GB unallocated space and choose to create a new NTFS partition. Choose NTFS since it offers more features and security parameters and functions otherwise not found under FAT32.

After creating and formatting (to NTFS) a new partition, right click on the newly created 20GB NTFS partition. A menu will come up. On the menu, click on Manage Flags, select Boot and close that window. Your newly created 20GB partition will be seen as the boot partition under your system bios, you are good to go at this stage.

Close gParted, DoubleClick on the red (shutdown) icon on the top of the gParted desktop, and then DoubleClick on restart. The Restart sequence for gParted will start, wait for it to eject the CD for you, once done that, insert your Windows XP CD onto your drive, then press enter to resume system restart. At this point, your original Windows 7 installation won’t be available because you have change the partition flags boot parameter from the primary partition to the secondary one that we just created here, to make that installation bootable again, just repeat the same procedure again, this time setting the primary partition as boot. The process is as simple as that; in case if you have to return back.

Start the XP installation procedure as normal. When you get on the drive's menu, select the drive the corresponds to the 20GB partition you created earlier (typically it will be labeled as Drive C:, if you formatted it as NTFS under gParted, select that, but don’t touch the original larger partition)

Keeping Windows XP under that 20GB partition is a great strategy since it improves hard drive-seek responsiveness and in the process ensures that the 'system' partition never gets too fragmented…

This should help folks that wish to experiment with Downgrading either Windows 7 or Windows Vista in a 100% risk-free environment where you can always go back if things didn't go as you expected under XP...

Restoring Your Windows XP Installation:

This is largely for machines that were initially running windows XP and were upgraded to windows 7/Vista.

Open your Windows 7 drive (usually C drive) and make sure that you haven’t deleted the Windows.old folder, which was created by Windows while installing Windows 7 on the XP drive. Note that without the help of Windows.old folder you won’t be able to downgrade from Windows 7.

Now check the size of Windows.old folder by right-clicking and then selecting properties. Make sure that Windows.old folder size is less than approximately two times the amount of free space available on Windows 7 drive (C drive). If the Windows.old folder size is two times as large as the Windows 7 drive free space, disable system restore feature and also disk cleanup to get some free space. Please note down your Windows 7 drive letter and also DVD drive letter before proceeding to the next step.

Insert your Windows 7 installation disc in the drive and reboot your machine. Press any key when prompted to do so. Select your language, time, keyboard type and then hit Next button to continue.

In the Install Windows screen, click Repair your computer option to open System Recovery Options.

Here select your Windows 7 OS and note down your Windows 7 Drive letter before clicking next.

In the following window, click Command Prompt to start downgrading from Windows 7 to XP.

First you need to move all the contents of your Windows 7 drive to a folder. So type the following commands one by one and then hit enter after each command (here “D” is your Windows 7 drive letter).

D:

Md Win7

Move Windows Win7\Windows

Move "Program Files" "Win7\Program Files"

Move Users Win7\Users

Attrib –h –s –r ProgramData

Move ProgramData Win7\ProgramData

Rd "Documents and Settings"

Next you need to copy all the contents of Windows.old folder to the drive. Again, type all the commands mentioned below one by one and then hit enter after each command.

move /y d:\Windows.old\Windows d:\

move /y "d:\Windows.old\Program Files" d:\

move /y "d:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings" d:\

Next task is to restore the boot sector by entering the following command:

E:\boot\bootsect /nt52 d:

(Where E is your DVD driver letter & D is OS drive letter)

Finally restore the boot.ini file by executing the following commands:

Attrib –h –s –r boot.ini.saved                                                                                      

Copy boot.ini.saved boot.ini

Type Exit and reboot your machine to start using your Windows XP again. You are done! If you want to free up some disk space, delete Win7 folder in the root of your XP drive. Good luck!

Getting the drivers:

If you thought you were done with the trickiest part, then you ought to think again. The battle has only just begun! After XP is installed, go and 'bless' your Driver Packs DVD, along with any other Drivers you may have found online that might work for you and go and try them. Of course finding the right drivers online with no prior knowledge of what you exactly want can be tricky, but here are a few tips;

Network drivers:

Quite one of the easiest drivers to come across, any recent version of Realtek 10/100/1000 PCI-E NIC Family, particularly the PCI-E NIC all in one NDIS Driver will certainly come in handy. It once bailed me out when one of my first downgrade sessions was on the verge of going awry!

Graphics:

Like LAN/network drivers, graphics drivers are not so hard to come by, as most of them tend to be interoperable with the graphics initially made for notebooks running windows 7 for the same brand, and sometimes for different brands. I have once used HP graphics drivers on a different brand, and they worked just as fine. 

Wireless:

This is another stubborn one. Before you come across the Atheros AR5007 802.11b g WiFi Adapter family, finding the right set of wireless drivers for your downgraded pc can be one hell of a boorish nightmare! Yes, especially if you are the picky type that will strictly go after hp wireless drivers just because your notebook is hp. You will be in for a massive disappointment.  There are certain brands for which there are no XP drivers. Most latter models of HP and Dell Pcs fall in this category. Atheros AR5007 802.11b g WiFi Adapter pack is more universal, and comes in a variety of categories and models, and is available for windows XP, Vista and windows 7. It therefore will save you more time if you can ‘Google’ and download Atheros driver pack upon successfully downgrading your PC! You may as well check them out at http://www.atheros.cz/

Sound:

The trickiest of them all; it took me a whole 3 months before I could find out what I exactly needed to do in order to have my newly downgraded HP play some sound. Surprisingly, I have had this same set of drivers work on other brands (yes, including those rare ones like Tropix!). The first step in this tiring process was getting a MS UAA driver. The rest of the process and set of drivers required to install your sound is explained below;

Download MS UAA (required with a reboot before Audio driver) from here: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp33501-34000/sp33867.exe

Download Conexant SmartAudio 221 from http://www.mediafire.com/?dg0cmmkm4y4, and Unzip to a folder.

Run installer. If it returns any errors use Device Manager.

From Device Manager, right click "Audio Device on HD", choose Update driver.

Do not choose to connect to the internet, and instead op for “Install from a list or specific location”

Select Don't Search, I will choose the driver to install,

For the Hardware Type select 'Show All Devices'

Remove the check from "Show Compatible Hardware" and click on "Have Disk".

Click next, and browse to the unzipped folder and choose the "WiSVHe5.inf".

Ignore any windows XP warnings when it complains (Yeah. These first gave me a scare).

Reboot your PC.

Alternatively you can download Conexant HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP Driver from ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp33501-34000/sp33839.exe. The rest of the installation process is pretty much the same.

-- Additional info from www.amdk7.com

--Dan B. Atuhaire