Vista - Uninstall Vista/ Windows Media Center

Hi my name is Mari. Anyways, my sister had a Windows Vista Home Basic version
cd. I installed it and put it on my laptop. I know..stupid move. But now all
of my documents are gone and pictures and music files. But I am not as
concerned about those anymore. I just want to know if I get the Windows XP
Media Center disc, and install it as I did the Windows Vista CD, will it be
back to normal? I know I won't get my pictures or any documents back. But I
can't play any DVD's in my laptop anymore, when I try to watch a movie, it
says no decoder is installed. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you for your
time.

You may a lucky one and get it back to win xp but it depend a lot on - how
you installed your Vista. On this News Group you may find a lot of
materials
on the this topic. But firs take a look on this:

Installing and uninstalling Windows Vista for dual-boot with XP
http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...-boot-with-xp/

Uninstall
After playing around with Vista for a few days, you may want to remove it
from your system, and reclaim the hard drive space. Microsoft has made this
step very simple as well.

Boot your computer in to Windows XP.
Ensure you have the Vista DVD image emulated or in the DVD drive.
Go to “Start� and “Run�. Type in “e:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force�
(without quotes, and replacing 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 drive’s root folder
(C, these were backup files of your previous bootloader, now no longer
useful.
Optional: Restart to ensure it still works.
Use your partition software to merge your partitions together.
And now you have returned your computer to its previous state, without Vista
and without the new bootloader. If anyone has any issues, please post it in
comments and I’ll try to resolve it.

================

"indierocker123" <u36056@uwe> wrote in message news:75965c852a53f@uwe...
> Hi my name is Mari. Anyways, my sister had a Windows Vista Home Basic
> version
> cd. I installed it and put it on my laptop. I know..stupid move. But now
> all
> of my documents are gone and pictures and music files. But I am not as
> concerned about those anymore. I just want to know if I get the Windows XP
> Media Center disc, and install it as I did the Windows Vista CD, will it
> be
> back to normal? I know I won't get my pictures or any documents back. But
> I
> can't play any DVD's in my laptop anymore, when I try to watch a movie, it
> says no decoder is installed. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you for
> your
> time.
>

Hi,

If the installation moved XP to windows.old, you may be able to restore it,
see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933168

You may also find that your image and sound files are there as well if you
had previously stored them in your user profile's documents folder.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"indierocker123" <u36056@uwe> wrote in message news:75965c852a53f@uwe...
> Hi my name is Mari. Anyways, my sister had a Windows Vista Home Basic
> version
> cd. I installed it and put it on my laptop. I know..stupid move. But now
> all
> of my documents are gone and pictures and music files. But I am not as
> concerned about those anymore. I just want to know if I get the Windows XP
> Media Center disc, and install it as I did the Windows Vista CD, will it
> be
> back to normal? I know I won't get my pictures or any documents back. But
> I
> can't play any DVD's in my laptop anymore, when I try to watch a movie, it
> says no decoder is installed. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you for
> your
> time.
>