???
ÂÂ! ÂÂ!Hey people if anybody can help me that be grand i recently got the vista os from a mate looks excellent far better than xp however some programs won't work with vista i'm particulary miffed about MINITAB 14ÂÂ! an academic statistical program and my university email is not working under xp just wondering if any of this can be fixed if not then how do i convert back to xp?

any help would be appreciated cheers!

Igor KÂÂ! ÂÂ!

Hi, I'm not sure as i've never used Vista, but if you installed Vista on the same partition as XP, Then I'm afraid you've lost XP for good.

__________________
I Beat Anorexia.

If I have helped you, please consider donating a little cash to Cancer Research UK

correction "university email is not working under vista"

yeh i'm pretty sure i didn't install on the same partition

then you can start Windows XP by restarting your PC and selecting "Windows XP" when it asks you which operating system you want to boot...

__________________
I Beat Anorexia.

If I have helped you, please consider donating a little cash to Cancer Research UK

yeh i do have that option availble it clearly says two option the vista and start with an earlier version of windows which i guess is xp however i have tried to do this but when clicked the screen turns blank and the hard drive doesn't appear to be doing anything? and it stays like this for ages

MidiMoto is correct. Vista, like Windows 2000 and Windows XP, can be installed and dual boot with any other Windows OS.

However, this is the first time that the process has been destructive if you installed onto the same partition. I imagine this is probably due to the fact the installer isn't tuned yet. If you installed Beta 2, there were quite a few problems with the new installer that have been overcome with Pre-RC1.

If you installed Windows Vista onto c:\, Windows XP wont be bootable. It might work to run a Windows repair, but I wouldn't advise this course of action at all. If you re-installed Windows XP without a format, you'd avoid losing any data, but your filesystem gets progressively messier when you install Windows more than once without formatting.

so what are my options then i'm stuck with vista till the end of may? when is it that vista will become availble on the market? is it september?

You can back up your data and reinstall Windows XP properly.

Vista is set to launch early 2007; Microsoft's official statement is an 80% chance of a January release. Vista's release wont exactly fix your problems either since you'd need to reinstall Vista as well.

In your current situation, there's no path of action that eventuates with a fully function OS and clean file system without a format. Sorry :-\

can you explain to me what is pre-rc1 and how can i get it? will this fix some of my problems i.e not being able to run xp on the other partition? ???

I cannot guarantee that Pre-RC1 (beta 3) will solve your issues.

In fact, I wouldn't recommend anyone use pre-retail builds of OS at all, unless they have sufficient technical expertise to solve the problems they encounter themselves. You wont find anyone who can provide good tech support on Vista at this stage. There's a reason why no software or even drivers are supported in Vista yet. I would certainly in no way recommend installing one beta of Vista on top of another.

You're much better off reinstalling Windows XP.