Can Vista be downgraded to XP on T61 that came with Vista?

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tandyman
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Can Vista be downgraded to XP on T61 that came with Vista?

#1 Post by tandyman » Thu Aug 30, 2007 8:27 pm

Heres' a dumb question, but maybe i'll get lucky with an easy answer:

I purchased a T61 with WIndows Vista Home Edition--really because it was $75 cheaper than ordering it with XP.

Is there anyway to downgrade Windows Vista back to XP without uninstalling Vista, buying XP outright, and then installing it?

If so please provide layman-type instructions,

Thank You
IBM Thinkpad T61, core 2 duo 2.0 Ghz, 1GB, 160Gb, wsxga 15.4", DVD...

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#2 Post by Kyocera » Thu Aug 30, 2007 8:35 pm

You'd need a dual boot scenario, in layman terms that would be splitting the HD and installing xp on a new drive, then you'd be able to boot into XP or Vista, this is not a simple solution.

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#3 Post by ryengineer » Thu Aug 30, 2007 8:50 pm

Sir, please see this.

From lenovo, in your case it's unlikely since your machine did not come with Windows Vista Business or Ultimate. Nevertheless you can buy a boxed copy of Windows XP (retail... etc. which you mentioned about buying I believe), then first create the Product Recovery Disks of your preloaded Vista machine and leave the hidden Service Partition untouched while doing the installation or since you already would have Product Recovery Disks so you can format the whole hdd, do a clean install and make use of recovery disks when you decide on moving to Vista in the future.

FYI and to be precise, this is what recovery disks contains and can do.
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#4 Post by Jim K » Mon Sep 03, 2007 4:06 pm

Some might consider that to be an upgrade...
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#5 Post by SHoTTa35 » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:00 pm

there will always be someone wanted to downgrade and some always wanting to upgrade. My girl upgraded to Vista and rathers it much more than XP that came on her system. She says this seems more stable than XP and she yet to kill Vista in 7 months, she did that to XP in 2.
Current - Thinkpad T410si - Core i3 330m, 4GB, 250GB 5400RPM, WXGA+, FPR, BT, Camera, DVDRW, Gobi2000, Win7 Pro x32
Past - Thinkpad T410 - T400 - T61 - T60 - T43 - T42 - T41 - T40 - T23 - 600X

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