Ok, it may be that I'm dumb, but I can find no help online on where to find a disk. I ordered a laptop and its come with Vista and I googled how to downgrade and it shows the steps but not a way to get a disk. And it said that Microsoft won't provide one if its preloaded on a machine or some shit, I may have to wait for my laptop to get here to see if the vista disk comes with it or ifs its just installed and just provides a key, OR, if its just comes with vista with no key or what ever. This isthe first laptop I ordered so I'm not sure.

 

Why get a laptop with Vista on it then? You couldn't demand that they put XP on it?

 

No, I bought it on newegg. I know you can demand it at bestbuy or circuit city, but this was only 450

Also Richard, your sig, is that from a fanfic and if it is which one, sounds like a cool scene.

 

Um, I know that you're not asking where to find a warez copy of XP, because that would totally get you banned.

So you either want to:

1. Find out if your school is part of the MSDN Academic Alliance. Look here if you're not sure. If it is, you can get XP for free, and it will be totally legit.

2. Buy This

3. Look on eBay

 

I'm not looking for an illegal copy, I'm getting a laptop with vista, and in the EULA it says when you own Vista you can transfer the license to a lower OS like xp/2000/nt. I just cant figure out where to get the damn disk, I'll try your links.

Edit: Looked up my school, has professional for 24 USD.

 

I recommend getting XP Pro. I've heard rumors that Home has craploads of bugs in it.

Also, my sig is from this story (its a quote from Harry talking to Dumbledore): http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4563333/1/

It's the best scene in the whole story, I think.

 

Well I figured out where to how to do it now..... sorta legal I guess. But now I'm driver hunting for the first time. The HP site has some drivers I need, but I'm finding it difficult locating the other ones. If I get the driver to make the internet work, doesn't windows update fix it?

 

@Jolly Rancher
I read somewhere that they can't help you with this. I'm looking up a bunch of sites and its confusing the shit outta me.

@jolly... again

When you reinstall a OS it formats your HD, so your ethernet adapteron't work and video card stuff like that. Since I want to downgrade I have to find the drivers for XP, and I think I remember before getting a driver for a vid card or something it had a windows update option, not sure, thats what I was asking.

Edit: Ya that somewhere I read it says Dell, Lenovo, offers the disk, but not HP... Guess what vendor my laptop is... Only three guesses, pretty sure you dont need the first two.

 

You'll want to download your internet drivers BEFORE you format your PC. Then you can download your other drivers (unless you have a disk for them), but its usually a better idea to download from the site seeing how they always update video card drivers.

Windows Update generally updates Windows issues, although sometimes in certain hardware, it might have it. You're better off downloading the drivers for the hardware, formatting, installing Windows, then installing drivers.

 

I have all the hp drivers, the video card is confusing me, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M
I went to the website and I tried puttting the info in. But the only card that came up near mine was NVIDIA GeForce 7150, which I dont think is right.

 

last I knew, they had the categories where they had the drivers for each series, like the 7,000, 8,000 and 9,000 all in their seperate file. Like the 6,000 category, had all the versions in one file, and the same with the 7's and 8's.

Here's a link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_178.24_whql.html

I went there and its still the same. That should bring you to the 7,000 series download.

 

Ya well, I think Newegg reworded the video card so I'm going to wait and install xp and then nvidia.com has the ability to auto detect your hardware, So that should fix it.

 

better off going to computer shows and buy the hardware there, if you ask me. Or Fry's or something.

 

Microsoft says it doesn't matter if the xp disk and I got a key. Then I have to call microsoft. but I have most drivers so it should work with xp than I can work from there to get the rest of the drivers.

 

No, it won't. Nvidia.com is no good for laptop nVidia drivers. The only way to get it working is with some hacking. More info on that here.

The official driver for your video card will be on the HP website. Find the support section for your laptop model. All necessary drivers should be on the same page.

 

Ok, after a few days of searching and reading forums I figured something out. If you buy a machine nowadays, you most likely are stuck with vista, so if you don't like it I guess you have to learn to enjoy it, we're stuck with it until Microsoft come up with a better OS. I'm thinking about switching to Mac.