Going from VISTA to XP -- any advice?

I'm sure someone on this board has tried moving from Vista to XP on their AO751H. I successfully installed Windows 7 from USB , and used it for a while. Given some of the success stories here regarding XP, I figured I would try XP instead. However, the process of installing XP from a USB stick is daunting. I've tried many resources (including USB_MULTIBOOT_10), and none seem to work for me. In each regard, I get an "operating system not found" error when trying to boot from the USB stick. And, yes, I have NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI all present on the stick.

Has anyone successfully reverted to XP from a Vista-OEM system? If so, how did you do it? Would an external DVD drive help? I'm not opposed to buying one, but I would prefer not to.

Thank you for any advice!

 

Unetbootin is definitely the best tool for booting or installing from an USB disk: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Don't mind that the documentation states that this is for installing Linux, it works just fine for any bootable image. I used this for installing win7, should work just fine for XP too.

 

Figured it out... you need to set the USB key to "active" each AND EVERY time it reboots (the MBR will reset the active partition for the system). Within ANY windows system (so, just have another computer running while you set it up), do this...

Code:

run diskpart.exe
type "list volume" to obtain a list of all partitions
select the USB key you wish to use by typing "select volume x" where x is the number of the partition
type "active"
type "exit"

All done!

 

Xanadu, just curious why you decided to switch to XP from Vista.

I have considered doing the same as Vista seems too resource-demanding for a low-powered netbook.

Have you gotten XP installed & running yet? How is the speed compared to Vista?

 

Guys just go to win7 if you have Vista. Do the upgrade program. Get an image of the 32b RTM and do the -rearm every 30 days until you get your key.

 

Does Win7 perform BETTER than Vista on netbooks?

 

It does for me. Would like to compare 7 to XP though to see how they match up on this netbook.

 

Install the right (Aug 11) Intel GMA500 drivers, and disable window transparency. and it's plenty fast.