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Formating and Your Operating System

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8 replies

by leedsfan88 1 view

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So I'm currently thinking of putting windows xp on my laptop.

So I have few questions

1-
All i have is three restore disks for my laptop, which is vista. So if i completely format my harddrive to remove everything bit of vista. if i want to return to vista at a later date, will those three restore disks be enough for me to do so?

2-
Is there any chance my laptop won't support xp, if I'm moving from a 64bit to a 32 bit operating system...Vista 64bit and XP 32bit.

I think that's all my questions for now, thanks in advance for your help

8 replies

by klk

The restore disks SHOULD work - I haven't had a problem using mine a few years back from a bad Vista install back to XP. Those restore disks are generated to identify the BIOS to see if it will be a valid install.

There IS a chance XP will not install on your machine, but it's not likely. Just make sure the manufacturer will provide XP drivers. If not, you may need to go to the hardware manufacturer's website to download (graphics, chipset, etc.).

Good luck!!

by leedsfan88

But wouldn't the BIOS be removed by formatting the hard drive or is it just not affected?

Sorry i'm just not well versed on this side of the computer, formatting and operating systems aren't my strong point

by klk

BIOS is not affected by installing a new operating system. It is what's referred to as ROM - Read-Only Memory. The only thing you will be erasing is the hard drive.

Keep in mind, before you erase the drive, make sure you have ANY/ALL important data backed up. :)

by unkn0wn f0rces

The BIOS is not stored on the HDD it is stored on a chip on the mobo....

by leedsfan88

I have all my data backed up on a weekly basis, online and on my external hard drive, not a whole lot to be fair.

Cheers you've be of great help

by mafergus

All of the XP drivers and put em on either a USB key or burn em to a CD. That will insure that;

1) the drivers do exist

2) It will make the reinstall a lot faster.

by tintoman

by the level of advice you have received on this considering that you haven't even told us what make or model of computer this is.
Although it is true to say that formatting the hard drive wont alter the bios, the fact is that bios is electronically programmable and it CAN be written to, why else would motherboard manufacturers provide periodiv bios upgrades?
Furthermore it is entirely possible that your hard drive contains a recovery partition which holds all the files for recovery to factory condition, if that is so then formatting the drive will delete the recovery partition as well.
If your computer was supplied with recovery discs for both Vista and XP then you should be home and dry, never the less it is quite common for bios to need flashing in order to run another OS, some recovery discs do this during the setup process

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