Vista - Uninstall Vista and go back to XP

I had to scrap a laptop and used the O/S installation disc to upgrade my desktop from XP to Vista Home Premium. This has been a disaster and I am getting warning messages of programs stopped working. These include

ASUS Control Centre
Instant Write Control Centre
Gateway Service
PML driver
Live Update Engine Com Module
Tray Starter
TomTom HOME
Windows Explorer is intermittent

I cannot access the Internet and my DVD drive does not respond

A disaster!!!!

It seems that I would be better reverting to XP - which I am happy with. How can I do this bearing in mind that my DVD/CD does not work and I cannot access the internet.

I may say I use Vista on my desktop at the office and on a new laptop I purchased and I am happy with these.

Well your CD/DVD drive will work - you run the XP disc from boot up, not from in Vista.

If it doesn't work there, then it's most likely broken .

There are those dreaded words again, was it an UPGRADE, or did you format your HDD and do a clean install.?
Many people have had trouble with the upgrades disks.

Thanks for the replies.

Not being particularly computer literate I merely ran the installation disk. I did not format my HDD in preparation. I did not do a custom installation.

I hope this helps.

Hello Willem,

Welcome to the forums.

This may be of some help. Clean Install From Upgrade Vista[11]=General%20Tips

Hope so.

Gary

Upgrades are notorious for causing all sorts of problems as you've discovered

A clean installation will be best.

I see no one has asked if the Vista came pre-installed on the laptop because if it did it would be OEM and not transferable to another machine.

Can you get the chipset drivers for Vista from your laptop manufacturer?

Thaks all for your help.

Looking at the product key it does not contain the letters OEM so I take it that this is a retail version which can be installed in another computer. I have decided to do a clean install having saved on a flash drive my data files and drivers.

A bit of a basic question I suppose but is there a difference between an upgrade and an initial install disk?

I don't have much of the documentation for the previous laptop other than the Vista disk and haven't tried to contact the laptop manufacturer for the chipset drivers.

Where are you looking at the key because it's when it's installed on the machine that it puts the OEM if it's preinstalled.

A retail version can just be installed on a hard drive but an upgrade needs a version to upgrade from either already installed or by showing it the CD of a previous OS when installing the upgrade.