formatting old lappy

[Shicky]

Fixing up my gfs old lappy as im nice like that

Anyway I used to bugger about with plenty of desktops but never laptops. I was going to boot from cd and install a clean copy of xp as i figured it'd run better than vista on her machine. My question is basically that i dont see many ppl mentioning formatting their laptop, they always mention a recovery cd, now she doesnt have access to the recovery cd but its possible through acer startup menus, should you always use the recovery methods with the lappy? Or is it fine to clean format it?

Thanks

 

[valerian]

the only thing i would do unless putting win 7 on it, is make sure all the drivers are available seperately, eg, wifi, network, video sound, or you may possibly have a mare finding em.
if win 7 it is unusual in my experience that win7 wont pick up everything to start, or at least after the first update

 

[Shicky]

Its windows xp i want to install and get rid of her current vista as the spec is definitely not meant to handle vista or better. Will have a hunt and see if its ok for me to get the drivers elsewhere, thanks for the reply.

 

[valerian]

youll be surprised what low spec will run win 7, i wouldnt use vista as a benchmark
if it runs vista, i would put win 7 on it, it will perform far better than vista with the same spec

 

[linktoinsanity]

Its windows xp i want to install and get rid of her current vista as the spec is definitely not meant to handle vista or better. Will have a hunt and see if its ok for me to get the drivers elsewhere, thanks for the reply.

7 will probably run better than Vista btw, it's a lot less heavy on resources. However if you still want to go with XP then it will also run better than Vista on a slower spec laptop.

I'd recommend taking another look at Windows 7 though.

 

[Shicky]

unfortunately win 7 isnt an option as i dont have it. Used the recovery stuff and it seems to have wiped most things fine. Getting the same error as previous to the recovery though

Nevermind fixed