Operating system.....why can`t I revert to XP from Vista...Bios Lock?

I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error about
hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure out
why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i appreciate
it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

Hi!

I would see if the storage subsystem on the computers you have might require
a third party driver to be loaded during the startup phase of Windows XP
setup...where the program says "press F6 if you need to a load third party
storage driver".

If you have to do that, you'll need both the driver and a blank diskette.
Putting the driver on CD might work too...I don't know as I've never tried
that.

You may also wish to thoroughly bulldoze the contents of the hard drive with
something like DBAN...on the off chance that something from the Vista
installation and disk setup might be getting left behind and causing
problems with XP.

William

"Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote in message
news:467307ff$0$20531$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
> have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
> Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
> loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
> Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
> where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error
about
> hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure
out
> why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
> spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
> appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i
appreciate
> it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry
>

It all depends on which version of XP you are installing. The earliest versions
including SP1 (I think) do not include SATA drivers. The latest SP2a does
include SATA drivers and installing it is a no-brainer on a system with SATA
drives.

If you install from an earlier version of Windows, you need to have a
***FLOPPY*** diskette with the SATA drivers on it, in unzipped format. This may
prove to be a real challenge for a system without a floppy drive. Clever these
Micro$oft folk, aren't they? On one hand, they tout legacy-free systems
without floppies, parallel, serial and PS/2 ports. On the other hand, they
require us to use a legacy floppy drive (and nothing else will do!) to install
Windows on SATA drives.

You might succeed by slipstreaming the SATA drives and building a new Windows
install CD, a topic too complicated to explain in 25 words or less... Ben Myers

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:43:22 -0400, "Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote:

> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error about
>hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure out
>why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
>spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
>appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i appreciate
>it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

There is no problem doing what you want to do, you are doing something
wrong and/or you don't know how to do it.

One possibility: The BIOS of the computer might have been set to "LOCK"
changes to the MBR and partition boot records of the hard drive. This
is done to prevent MBR virus' and is perfectly reasonable, but it
prevents installation of ANY operating system (Vista, Linux, XP, 98 ....
ANY operating system). It's a setting in the BIOS to unlock it (you
might want to re-lock it after you install the OS).


Carrie wrote:
> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
> have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
> Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
> loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
> Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
> where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error
> about hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to
> figure out why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or
> do I have to spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest
> trying.I would appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the
> past and i appreciate it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

Thanks...taked to Dell...Said I should delete all partitions or buy a new
drive....Was trying to install XP on Media Center 2005 with SP2 and it still
blue screened...I have alot of extra drives at home but unfortuneity all ATA
and opening my case there are no motherboard connectors...was going to put
in a Maxtor card I have lying around....Peace, Harry





"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> wrote in message
news:8lb673p6407la8sfphso8odff5ds8ph86o@4ax.com...
> It all depends on which version of XP you are installing. The earliest
> versions
> including SP1 (I think) do not include SATA drivers. The latest SP2a does
> include SATA drivers and installing it is a no-brainer on a system with
> SATA
> drives.
>
> If you install from an earlier version of Windows, you need to have a
> ***FLOPPY*** diskette with the SATA drivers on it, in unzipped format.
> This may
> prove to be a real challenge for a system without a floppy drive. Clever
> these
> Micro$oft folk, aren't they? On one hand, they tout legacy-free systems
> without floppies, parallel, serial and PS/2 ports. On the other hand,
> they
> require us to use a legacy floppy drive (and nothing else will do!) to
> install
> Windows on SATA drives.
>
> You might succeed by slipstreaming the SATA drives and building a new
> Windows
> install CD, a topic too complicated to explain in 25 words or less... Ben
> Myers
>
> On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:43:22 -0400, "Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>>have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>>Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>>loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>>Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>>where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error
>>about
>>hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure
>>out
>>why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
>>spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
>>appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i
>>appreciate
>>it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

Barry I will look for it but I did a reinsall of Vista using the cd with no
problem on the 410..thanks Harry




"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:46733e48$0$17157$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> There is no problem doing what you want to do, you are doing something
> wrong and/or you don't know how to do it.
>
> One possibility: The BIOS of the computer might have been set to "LOCK"
> changes to the MBR and partition boot records of the hard drive. This is
> done to prevent MBR virus' and is perfectly reasonable, but it prevents
> installation of ANY operating system (Vista, Linux, XP, 98 .... ANY
> operating system). It's a setting in the BIOS to unlock it (you might
> want to re-lock it after you install the OS).
>
>
> Carrie wrote:
>> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>> have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>> Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>> loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>> Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>> where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error
>> about hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to
>> figure out why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or
>> do I have to spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I
>> would appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i
>> appreciate it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:43:22 -0400, "Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote:

> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error about
>hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure out
>why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
>spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
>appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i appreciate
>it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry

XP probably doesn't "know" Vista when you try to load it. I think
you'll have to wipe the drive and do a clean install.
--
Top 10 Conservative Idiots:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/top10

I don't know about the 520, but odds are with the 410 if you have the drives
set to 'raid enabled' in the BIOS (regardless if you have a RAID array
configured or not) you'll need to download the RAID drivers and when
installing XP, press F6 during the installation when asked, to load other
drivers. Load the RAID drivers and continue.


"Paul Knudsen" <me_not@here.org> wrote in message
news:tllb735kvvl1ig1du1g0k6dk3lesqkqvom@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:43:22 -0400, "Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>>have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>>Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>>loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>>Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>>where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error
>>about
>>hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure
>>out
>>why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
>>spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
>>appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i
>>appreciate
>>it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry
>
> XP probably doesn't "know" Vista when you try to load it. I think
> you'll have to wipe the drive and do a clean install.
> --
> Top 10 Conservative Idiots:
> http://journals.democraticunderground.com/top10

Let me first say that I'm sure not everyone has this problem. But I
sure did, as did my friend.We have idential Asus MBrds in non-Dell
systems. Before we could reinstall XP we had to remove the vista
partitions. The only way we could do this was to use an ancient, small
utility called delpart. It has removed everything I've thrown at it
for past 10 or more years. Once delpart removed the Vista partition,
it was clear sailing. Good luck If delpart is unfindable then perhaps
something like partition magic could remove it. If I recall correctly,
there is a similar problem with windows 2003.
=================================

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:51:17 -0700, Paul Knudsen <me_not@here.org>
wrote:

>On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:43:22 -0400, "Carrie" <CG@Aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not exactly fond of Vista and would like to load XP .Computer and I
>>have tried two Dells a E520 and a XPS 410.Both have Vista Home Premium.
>>Finding that some of my software is not compatible with Vista I tried
>>loading XP on both computers.I tried XP Home (Dell disk) XP Media
>>Center(Dell disk) and a regular XP Pro disk. I cannot get past the part
>>where it finds Windows install.Both computers get a Blue screen error about
>>hardware changes and that you may have a virus.I am at a loss to figure out
>>why.Do I need to use the driver disk to format the drive? Or do I have to
>>spring for a new hard drive?.What would you suggest trying.I would
>>appreciate any help.You all have been helpfull in the past and i appreciate
>>it greatly.Peace and thanks...Harry
>
>XP probably doesn't "know" Vista when you try to load it. I think
>you'll have to wipe the drive and do a clean install.

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:46:50 -0400, "Timothy Drouillard"
<timothydrouillard@comcast.net> wrote:

>I don't know about the 520, but odds are with the 410 if you have the drives
>set to 'raid enabled' in the BIOS (regardless if you have a RAID array
>configured or not) you'll need to download the RAID drivers and when
>installing XP, press F6 during the installation when asked, to load other
>drivers. Load the RAID drivers and continue.

My bet is on what Timothy posted. If you don't have RAID drives, turn
off the "raid enabled" in the BIOS.

I loaded XP on a XPS 410 that originally came with Vista Business, and
I got the blue screen until I turned that option off.