reformatting my hard drive to get rid of vista and back to xp

[kelly2112]

I just bought a new e machine from walmart, It has Vista on it.(Vista Sucks) Im thinking about erasing the hard drive and starting over with XP. Is this a good idea? and how do I do it.

[ReadMeToo]

It takes a bit of getting use to but deppending in the version of Vista it perfroms quite well, " which version of Vista"

But to answer your Question yes you can but be advised you will be doing alot of updates. Do you own a full blown XP sp2 version , plus you will need to download all your drivers for your system from emachine.

[Charlie]

This is a long process as you'll need several things.

1. Killdisk - http://download2.lsoft.net/boot-cd-iso.zip

Unzip it and burn the image to a cd or cdrw.

Put the disc in the dvd drive then be sure you start up options is set to dvd drive as well in the bios.

Run it depending how big the hard drive is depends how long it'll take. 320 gig takes about 1.5 hours.

Now when that is done put your XP disc in and install as normally you would.

It is best to invest in a small program called Driver Detective this will gather all the drivers needed for the motherboard and such for your PC usually the disc drivers are in the instillation on the restore disc so you'll need to get them manually.

The Driver Detective isn't free either but will make life easier as there is no way to download them from Emachines site since it comes with vista they'll have the vista drivers for it.

[ReadMeToo]

That programs been gone a long time, 2 years or more .

[Smduff]

I prefer vista like Readme too said it takes some time to get use to but i find it much nicer than xp.

[Charlie]

I use Vista as well there isn't nothing to it as long as you have enough horsepower.

[bcsherwood]

I would stay with vista you certainly would be opening up a can of worms if you don't do your format and install the drivers corrrectly.
just my ideas on the matter.
brad