difficulties with installing XP on a Vista based

[test84]

A friend of mine got this laptop:
VGN-FZ140E
which is
Intel Core2 duo 1.8
Ram 2g
HDD 200g

and is unable to install Xp on it. it came with Vista pre-installed on it and he says that he cannot install xp on it! he's no noob or what, so i know its somewhat tricky.

is there any special trick to install windows xp on these machines which came with Vista pre installed?
TIA.

 

[Linkiboy]

Format hard drive first, then put the XP disk in.

 

[kellyan95]

You might not be able to, let me find this month's MaximumPC, there is a work-around for most of the problems (It's XP's fault by the way)

 

[ZeWarrior]

Its not XPs fault, make sure he's trying to install with a XP SP2 Disc. Also Try formatting the HDD with a Gparted Live CD first.

 

[kellyan95]

"Almost 100% of the time, the problem is with the High Definition Audio Bus package for Windows XP. It must be installed before you can install the modem or sound drivers on a Vista machine that was downgraded to XP. See Knowledge Base artible KB888111"

 

[ZeWarrior]

Funny, on my Desktop I took out Vista and installed XP over it a lot of times

^

 

[test84]

"Almost 100% of the time, the problem is with the High Definition Audio Bus package for Windows XP. It must be installed before you can install the modem or sound drivers on a Vista machine that was downgraded to XP. See Knowledge Base artible KB888111"

thnx for ur efforts/time but he is not able to install the windows xp itself in first place.

 

[DaRk_ViVi]

I think that problem is that the laptot has a sata hdd, if so he will get a "HDD not found" error during the XP setup. You have to download the drivers from the producer website, put them on a floppy (yeah, a floppy, so get your hands on a usb floppy reader if the laptop doesn't have one integrated) and press the F6 button at the beginning of the installation of XP (when you see the blue screen, however it's written at the bottom of the screen).

However installing XP with Vista preinstalled is a pain because they have 2 different boot loaders, so when you finish the installation of XP Vista won't boot anymore and you have to follow a procedure (this one, quite simple) to restore the boot loader for both the OS.

You can install XP without formatting the HDD, just resizing the Vista partition. I did a couple of times.

 

[ZeWarrior]

Is it an XP SP2 Disc? the Regular XP disc without any service packs can't install on a SATA HDD