Difficulty setting up windows on wifes laptop

Scotspaul

Scotspaul

Scotspaul

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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.
 
You will have trouble installing xp on a hard drive in another pc and putting the drive back in the laptop as it will install all the components of the pc so when you put it back in the laptop it won't understand whats happened. You may need to take the laptop apart and take the battery out the motherboard to reset the bios password. Not sure if there is any other way.
 
Scotspaul said:
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.
Click to expand...

Ways I can think of -

1. Are you sure the laptop does not have a boot from option, usually F11 or F12 which then allows you to select which device to boot from first. Try pressing these function keys when you see the laptops splash screen at the beginning, where you would normally press a key to go to bios. If so then you could boot from the XP discs no probs.

2. Remove hard drive and connect it to another PC, using say a 2.5" to 3.5" convertor or a USB to IDE/SATA connector, then format the hard drive (first copy any stuff that needs keeping, ie docuements etc!!) then put the hard drive back in the laptop. Chances are its set to boot HDD, then CD/DVD, then etc. So when it tries to boot the HDD, it cant find an OS so will then try to boot from CD/DVD, as the XP disc is in there it will boot from that.

3. Dismantle laptop and remove CMOS battery then reconnect as said. Although this will probably mean a lot of dismantling to get to the motherboard where the CMOS battery resides.

What laptop is it ?
 
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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,
 
Just remembered its F12 for the boot menu for Acer's but sadly its set to disabled in BIOS as default :(

Just as a thought have you tried booting the laptop with the XP install disc already in the DVD drive ? Reason I ask is because the default boot priority for Acer's is usually CD, HDD etc.

So that is all you might have to do ! (unless someone has changed it)
 
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 said:
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.
Click to expand...

If I remember right when Vista came out there was some woohaww about it and companys had to ship machines with both Vista and a downgrade to XP. Cant quite remember what but there was some issue with Vista, maybe drivers or something else that caused some companies to do so.
 
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?
 
If you just format the drive the laptop will still try and boot from it, try removing all partitions on the drive or performing a clean using diskpart from the command prompt.

Removing the cmos battery will probably not remove the password on this laptop which is pretty normal for laptops, they are much more secure than desktops.

Is the HDD SATA? On some laptops I have had this issue, what I did was remove the HDD, boot from cd then insert the hard drive while its loading the disk, this only works on some laptops as some wont support hot swapping.

You cant install the operating system on another computer unless the hardware is identical because of the HAL.
 
Scotspaul said:
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?
Click to expand...

Do you get any error messages when booting ?

Agree with other reply remove partitions from HD dont format it.

Just as a test too remove the HD completely and see if it will boot from the XP CD then. If it doesn't its probably due to the XP CD not being a boot cd.

What were the instructions given to convert from vista to XP ?
 
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 :)
 
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