xp to vista and back

[MrH1948]

I have an acer 5102 4 years old, on xp but bought with vista upgrade I did not use. I recently restored without cd,s as per the book I checked in BIOS that disc to disc was enabled then using ALT and F10 I got into the recovery process with success. pc was now as I bought it. But silly me I thought it would be a good time to do the vista upgrade, but although it upgraded ok it seemed not to do everything . eg I tried to open media player and the whole thing froze so I had to turn it offand it wont restart I now want to go back to xp, I have the 2 recovery cd,s I made if needed but now when I do the ALT.F10 bit all I get is... windows boot manager... windows failed to start, (this is all I get trying a normal start up now) a recent hard or software change may be the cause. I am invited to insert recovery disc and select version but only suggestion is vista I insert disc but just get same boot manager mssg again. I really want to go back to xp with either recovery discs or as before using "hidden" portion on hard drive. Can anyone help please. thanks

[Jelly Bean]

Hello there.

 

This may help you:

 

How to Uninstall Windows Vista | eHow.com

 

However to go back to XP if the above dont work your problem maybe you are using recovery disks you made yourself.You possibly need a full install XP disk....

[MrH1948]

Thanks for info, Yes think your right part of my problem is I only have xp back up discs and vista upgrade disc so I may try an older xp disc I have with code that came with an older desk top I will post the outcome. Thanks

[pauljohn]

sound not working

 

hi there, thanks for letting me join your site. my problem is that i tried reinstalling xp and it failed with the message that there was a disc read error. in desperation i installed vista, all ok except that ive now lost sound. ive looked in device manager and it says that there is no audio output device installed. i know a little about computers and i think its a driver problem..its a packard bell imedia 1618. i bought in 2005. ive been to the manufacturers site and there is nothing listed, i presume they dont support it now. can anyone point me in the right direction please? ive done search for drivers and had no luck, as i said earlier i only know a little about computers. thanking you all for having a look, happy new year.

paul

[Jelly Bean]

MrH your welcome let me know how it goes...

 

Paul did you run the Vista upgrade advisor first wich would of given you an indication if this older computer could fully run Vista?

 

Also you realy should make your own thread and not post on other peoples.

 

You need Realtek ALC655 driver download.....

 

Realtek

[pauljohn]

hi thanks for the prompt reply, im sorry i posted in the wrong one, think i must have clicked the wrong one. i didnt run any upgrade advisor as vista was the only one i could get to load at all. i tried xp and even windows 98 in desperation. i will try to get the driver later on. thanks. paul

[Jelly Bean]

Paul the driver hopefully should sort you out.

[MrH1948]

Hi jelly bean I am stumped. all I can get is" windows failed to start" etc and am invited to insert reboot disc with only vista as a choice,, the disc I have is only an update from xp provided when I bought the pc and there is no responce, it all goes in circles !! I insert disc,press enter as instucted and get " windows failed to start" again !!

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, that old XP disk from the older machine, having been installed and therefore fully activated on that machine, will firstly not be legal if you got it to work on the other machine, also the Vista upgrade will likely not work either as it may have already been matched to the XP install it was meant to upgrade. We now know that version is lost.

I suggest the safest and legal way out is to buy a new copy of Vista, or better if the system will run it, Windows 7, and start from the beginning again with that.

Nev.