Thinkpads Forum

So, I'm new to the forum and I have an x100e with Windows 7 and I want to downgrade to XP. I read another post on here about how do go about this, but it didn't make sense to me and I'm still confused. I have a usb DVD drive and the XP Pro installation disk, but for some reason its seems more difficult than it is. I can't boot from the dvd drive and the BIOS wouldn't give me the option either. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Any help or a simple method on how to get it installed?
Thanks

There is no reason a machine that new can't boot from a USB drive. If BIOS is not seeing the drive then try another drive. It may be incompatible. Try another USB cable and another port as well.

Connect your USB DVD drive with the Windows XP disc in it while the X100e is off. Turn on the X100e and hold down F12 during boot-up. A menu should appear to allow you to choose to boot from the DVD drive. Once you have installed Windows XP, download the Lenovo update utility from their website and it should get all the drivers for you.

Cheers.

Thanks, I figured it out and installed xp.

A question on the downgrade. I have a retail version of Windows XP Pro, SP2, from which I created a BartPE bootable flash, but when I try to boot on my x100e, I get a blue screen, which is probably related to the install disk/PE not having the correct disk drivers. If you were able to install or downgrade to XP, how did you get around this? Use an external floppy drive and copy the hard drive drivers that are available as XP drivers on the Lenovo support page for the x100e?

Thanks...

Mike

Use nlite to add the AMD ahci drivers to the installation media, then you can use usbmultiboot to made a bootable usbkey.

You may also want to replace the 5 oem files to get a preactivated copy for lenovo, search for XP SLP for more info on that.