# Operating system change?



## chickenmommy (Aug 24, 2004)

Here's a loaded question. I have two Dell laptops. The old one came with very user friendly XP. The new one came with un-user friendly Vista. The old one has the XP disc that says on it that it is a reinstallation CD and to only use this CD to reinstall the operating system on a Dell computer. Does this mean that it is not a complete operating system and is only for re-installing on a previously installed XP system and I cannot get away with uninstalling Vista on the new one and installing this XP on the new one? Or am I actually in possession of a little piece of heaven?


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## Kari (Mar 24, 2008)

I am Dell pc guy and at one of my consulting jobs, we are also a Dell Reseller. It has been my experience that many of the Dell reinstall XP CD's are generic enough to be used on a another Dell pc / laptop. However you should have a separate driver CD for each...depending on pc model as with some Dell's they did not ship a driver CD and only included the drivers on the pc hard drive, usually in c:\Dell folder.

Let me know what the original pc model is and what the new pc is.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

chickenmommy said:


> Here's a loaded question. I have two Dell laptops. The old one came with very user friendly XP. The new one came with un-user friendly Vista. The old one has the XP disc that says on it that it is a reinstallation CD and to only use this CD to reinstall the operating system on a Dell computer. Does this mean that it is not a complete operating system and is only for re-installing on a previously installed XP system and I cannot get away with uninstalling Vista on the new one and installing this XP on the new one? Or am I actually in possession of a little piece of heaven?


Call Dell, you can officially downgrade vista to XP, but you may need to pay for media. The CD will have all the XP on it but may only load on the computer type it was sold on. It will certainly not have all the drivers for the new laptop but those can often be downloaded separately.


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## chickenmommy (Aug 24, 2004)

Karihwanoron said:


> Let me know what the original pc model is and what the new pc is.


Old one is an Inspiron 8500 the new one is a Studio.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

You may run into issues with the XP Lic key


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Karihwanoron said:


> I am Dell pc guy and at one of my consulting jobs, we are also a Dell Reseller. It has been my experience that many of the Dell reinstall XP CD's are generic enough to be used on a another Dell pc / laptop. However you should have a separate driver CD for each...depending on pc model as with some Dell's they did not ship a driver CD and only included the drivers on the pc hard drive, usually in c:\Dell folder.


What he said.

LOL!

I've used a 'custom tailored' Dell XP disc many times on different models of Dells; some times they don't work but many times they do. I've actually managed to get Dell XP reinstall discs working on non-Dell computers, but that usually involves a bit of work that most non-techie types wouldn't do. LOL

Nice thing about Dells, though, is that a LOT of them use the same networking drivers, and the Dell driver discs usually have a range of networking drivers; so if you can get XP loaded, you can USUALLY get the networking drivers loaded. Once THOSE are loaded, anything else can be downloaded.


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## plowjockey (Aug 18, 2008)

Gary in ohio said:


> Call Dell, you can officially downgrade vista to XP, but you may need to pay for media. The CD will have all the XP on it but may only load on the computer type it was sold on. It will certainly not have all the drivers for the new laptop but those can often be downloaded separately.


Have to be careful here. Some newer hardware devices (that came with the Vista system) may not have XP drivers available.

Since XP is officially dead, most device companies will not waste their time and money, writing and testing XP hardware drivers.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

plowjockey said:


> Have to be careful here. Some newer hardware devices (that came with the Vista system) may not have XP drivers available.
> 
> Since XP is officially dead, most device companies will not waste their time and money, writing and testing XP hardware drivers.


XP isnt offical dead, Its still going to corporate customers, just not to consumers and will be supported into 2014. As for drivers. There is little new in the computer world and even less on laptops. For most consumer grade laptops (excluding high end gaming laptops) the hardware is basically the same and XP will load fine.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

plowjockey said:


> Since XP is officially dead, .


 Where do people get the idea that XP is dead? XP runs the corporate world and will for some time, its also officially supported by MS for 5 more years. Companies can't afford to change all their computers to Windows 7 the minute it comes out especially in this economy - the change will be gradual


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

What mnn said. Even if support DID cease, I am fairly certain there'd be a big grassroots plan to resurrect it.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Kung said:


> What mnn said. Even if support DID cease, I am fairly certain there'd be a big grassroots plan to resurrect it.


I think you can expect that after 2014. Win98SE was supported by community developed service packs for quite a while after Microsoft dropped update support.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Yeah - and WinXP, IMHO, is much better than Win98SE.


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