Difficulty setting up windows on wifes laptop

Scotspaul · 31 Jan 2011 at 09:58

Hi, not sure if this is correct forum for this, but here goes -

I want to downgrade wifes Acer laptop from vista to XP, we both hate it, and the thing needs a good clean out anyway, its got loads of bloatware on it, as well as junk she has installed accidentaly. Problem is the bios has a password that we don't know, and it doesnt boot from DVD first, so i cant begin the re-install process.

How easy is it to remove the hdd, install on another PC (my desktop) then re-fit into the lappy?

I done a fair bit of work on PC's before but not laptops.

Scotspaul · 31 Jan 2011 at 19:58

Thanks for the suggestions,

The lappy is an Acer travelMate 5720.

It doesn't appear to have a boot menu other than the 'safe mode' type options.

My most likely course of action will be to remove the disk and format it -
Father in law (who gave wifey the computer) is popping round tomorrow night. If he cant supply the password, this is what i will be doing, i dont fancy putting the laptop together again after hunting for the cmos battery,

Scotspaul · 1 Feb 2011 at 06:38

Yeah i have tried inserting the XP installation disk before start-up. Doesn't work. i suspect the shop it was bought from have set that password to ensure they get the job of fixing it if anything goes wrong.

It comes with a 'formatting disk' which is used to format the HD before downgrading the OS to XP. If i remove the HD and format it offline, i can replicate this without having to set the boot order to DVD first as it state in the instructions.

I still cant get over the fact that a new PC was supplied with a second OS and full instructions on how to downgrade the to it. I guess its not just me that thinks Vista is a pile of poo.

Scotspaul · 2 Feb 2011 at 14:18

OK, so last night I removed HD, formated the system partition of it and refitted it. Laptop still doesnt appear to want to boot from the XP disc.

Do i have a next step or do i give in and take it to a repair shop?

Scotspaul · 3 Feb 2011 at 10:48

Latest update then,

Deleting the partition didnt make any difference. The computer just hangs after the bios splash screen, with just the blinks cursor on the screen, no error messages.

Tried removing the HD for boot, still nothing. This lead me to try another Xp setup disk i have that i know boots. This worked, in so far as the setup program loaded and started running.

After switching off and re-fitting the HD i still got nothing however, so i (nervously) tried refitting the HD while the setup program was loading, and it seems to have worked. When i left for work this morning the setup program was happily formatting the disk. I will hopefully complete installation tonight.

Thanks for all the helpfull tips