[Domandred]

I guess the real question is do Dell computers using Vista do anything funky with the bios/hard drive partitions that make the upgrade(/heh) to XP from Vista very difficult or impossible?

[ontap]

I own a Dell with XP and I won’t be buying anymore of them,period.

[Old Sarge]

I work in IT Tech Support on the civilian side.

We tell EVERYONE: strip off Vista and retro-grade to XP SP3.

I have had no feedback on anyone having difficulties in regards to Dell and the retorgrade.

[SouthTexas]

Go through the commercial side, you can still get them with XP.

[absolootezer0]

dell laptops still bundled with XP

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/winxp_inspnnb?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml

[Space Wrangler]

Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve done 3 or 4 XP to Vista downgrades on Dell laptops, and it’s just a matter of setting the BIOS to boot from CD\DVD and then nuking the partition to allow for a clean XP installation.

[kevinm13]

Dell continues to sell new PC’s with XP. I understand that Microsoft promises to stop supporting XP some time soon in 2008 but I’m not sure when that will happen with all the Vista problems people have been having. Good Luck.

[ShadowAce]

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Don’t know if it’s still available, but IIRC, Dell offered WinXP on new machines for customers who desired it.

[Still Thinking]

I have seen on some old Dimension desktops the boot partition is actually not the C: drive contining Windows, plus they had that crappy diagnostic / recovery partition at the end of the drive. If you’re doing a full nuke and reinstall this won’t affect you though. You could even do it on a brand new hard drive, if you wanted to save the Vista install for some reason. The only problem you’re likely to encounter is if some of the hardware is from the Vista era, XP device drivers may not exist.

[Kaylee Frye]

I’d mainly be concerned about finding compatible drivers - which is why I’m living with my Vista HP laptop. I could dream it was XP, but I’d rather have the drivers for sure working than try and mess around for ages with XP... :( Good luck to you!

[TChris]

The easiest solution is to buy your Dell Inspiron with XP already on it. :-)

Just click the image below:

(The XP machines are at the bottom of the page)

[DesScorp]

Umm, you DO know you can buy a Dell WITH XP pre-installed, don’t you? Hell, you can get Dells with Linux these days.

[Doohickey]

Why do that? Vista is better.