Can't uninstall Vista

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Guest

I installed Vista on my Dell Laptop and did not keep the XP files. Now I
can't go back to XP, can't reinstall XP from CD, can't format drive. I want
to remove Vista and don't have any data to try and preserve. Can someone
help?
 
Is your cd a standard XP cd or a recovery cd? If it is a recovery cd Vista
may have overwritten the code in the MBR that responds to your function key
press to start the recovery. If so, you need to contact Dell for the repair
tool.
 
Walt--

Definitely if you can find an XP CD and install it you can format with it.

Why don't you download this from some box and format it using the disc?

How Do I Quick Format My Hard Drive
http://support.dell.com/support/top...04A74957845DB9AE6987846286E1B&c=us&l=en&s=dhs
Download A Boot Disk Containing The Format Command

http://support.dell.com/support/top...A74957845DB9AE6987846286E1B&c=us&l=en&s=dhs#1



"The old politics of partisan polerization won today." LOL A candidate in
the Nutmeg State who
campaigned that he was in fact, quite partisan (90% of the time) who is
rivaling the Titanic in staying afloat.

Joe-Mentum---->No Mentum

"If not elected, I will serve."

---Joe Leiberman, Team Conneticut

Come November, the party that ***didn't*** (pronounced by J-Lo diiii unnnnt)
control the government is going to be lol held accountable for that infernal
FIASCO in Iraq by gum.

"Stay the Course" says the pharmaceutical exec turned Sec Def just like
Thelma and Louise in the last scene in the movie before they drove into the
Grand Canyon.

CH
 
Colin is seeing my continual point in action about the huge disservice MSFT
and the 300 OEM Name partners do for the 500 million OEM preinstalls and
the projected coveted 400, 000,000 Vista OEM preinstalls according to a
slide MSFT is circulating to developers.

Look at all the problems created by MSFT's and their 300 OEM named
partners, who will make a fortune off this new Operating system and its
hardware requirements stubbornly refusing to provide a retail XP CD to
customers who spend thousands of dollars on their computer.

We have seen this for years in the XP newsgroups and now a whole new cycle
will kick in with Vista because there has been no change in greedy policy.

The MSFT OEM VP is an accountant. His name is Scott Di Valerio He is
responsible for counting *money. He has no computer science or engineering
experience. And it shows. There are 300 OEM name partners--the big guys
and thousands of little guys who work their ass off.

Take a bow, Scotty Di....
Scott Di Valerio Corporate Vice President, OEM Division
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/scottdiv/default.mspx

The little guys are forced by MSFT's rules to supply their customers with a
genuine retail CD or Vista DVD in the future. The big guys have no such
requirement. MSFT and the big guys are too cheap to provide customers
adequate means to recover.

This is a subject MSFT least wants to discuss and there is not an MVP alive
or a MSFT Vista team member who will take my challenge.

20 people in a room; 10 of them'em have a Vista DVD or an XP CD and 10 of
them have the junk that OEM named partners they are asked to recover from
permutations and combinations of no boot Vistas or no boot XPs.

Vista has the additional handicap that has emerged now that Win RE is a much
weaker recovery tool than the Repair Install in Windows XP.

No Vista PM on the Setup or the Win RE or File Core services would take
this challenge.

They know that the Recovery CDs (you can't boot from them to do an XP repair
install and you can't reach Win RE with the ones that are being made for
Vista) and the partitions on OEM boxes (hidden or not) are CODE SHORT of a
genuine XP CD are Vista DVD.

I have had Vista team members acknowledge this abdication of responsibility
and agree with me, as far back as their time as XP team members, and they
say their hands are tied by upper management.

As Cuba Gooding said, the MSFT Culture is about "Show Me the Money."

A dream would be to have Ballmer, Gates, Allchin, and Sinofsky in the room
with the best and brightest on their setup and recovery teams and do this
challenge on network prime time TV. It's not one you'll see any one from
MSFT agree to do.

They've been asked many times. They decline. They get that their retail CD
and DVD and OEM's recovery CD, and partitions are code short. They have all
of them, they know the code on them, and they know their code.


CH
 
I think Colin answered your question in the post below. Looks like I need to
borrow a retail version of XP and use it to format the drive.

Walt
 
Thank you Colin. I'll borrow a standard XP cd and use it to format the
drive. As you surmised, I have an oem recovery cd.
 
Actually, I thought it was only recovery partitions that was having the issue
due to the OEM MBR being overwritten. I think recovery cd's will work if the
machine is set up to boot from the cd....Could be wrong.
 
I started to post that immediately, but couldn't remember if you could
format before you were asked to put in the key in the install sequence. In
Vista, you're asked to put in the key earlier unless my memory is mixed up,
but in XP isn't it the case that you can format ***BEFORE*** you are asked
to type in the procuct key?

Windows XP Installation
http://tinyurl.com/poadl

I provided an easy format alternative that he could download onto a disc
from Dell.


How Do I Quick Format My Hard Drive
http://support.dell.com/support/top...04A74957845DB9AE6987846286E1B&c=us&l=en&s=dhs
Download A Boot Disk Containing The Format Command

http://support.dell.com/support/top...A74957845DB9AE6987846286E1B&c=us&l=en&s=dhs#1

CH
 
The issue of no repair install and no Win RE will be had by anything
shipping from OEM named partners that is not the same thing as a full
fledged retail CD or DVD and believe me, having done about 1000 repair
installs with XP for different people it is a bitch.

I was at a MSFT system builders meeting a couple months ago, and that is one
meeting where MSFT can do something very rare. Normally they don't put up
anyone who is not a very polished presenter. The MSFT rep here was
pathetic. OEM System Builders pushed him for why they force them to provide
retail media, but not the Dells and the 300 so-called named partners. His
nasty flip response was "When you guys start selling 50,000 I think it is
boxes then you will qualify to make whatever media you want for recovery.

There should be a federal law in the US forcing MSFT to come to an agreement
to ship a retail CD/DVD in Vista and Office in partnership with OEM.
Normally, I hate regulation that would impact the OS, such as a federal
judge and special master reviewing IE's code--MSFT kicked their butts hugely
in that case--they got the federal judge Thomas Penfield Jackson and his
special master designated Larry Lessing removed from the case by the D.C.
Circuit on appeal eventially got off with a sweetheart deal after hiring the
likes of Ralph Reed to be their Republican Bush administration lobbyist at
$27,000 per month before that hit the newspapers and in embarrasement Steve
Balmer fired him on the spot.

I cringed at the idea of a federal judge reviewing any of MSFT's code,
knowing that the reality is that most of the federal judiciary has never
even tried a federal case as a trial lawyer and wouldn't know the FRE (
Federal Rules of Evidence ) or could find the onpoint case law on the fly
even with the help of their law clerks if it bit them in the ass.

You would just as soon get a MSTF Vista team member to talk about the
intimate details of their live before any of them want to get near this
topic where their country hugely screws the public.

You will not find one MSFTie on a Vista team or formerly on an XP team who
is willing to take the challenge laid out and they'd rather the point was
never raised. They hate hearing this. They like life where they screw their
customers out of a viable recovery method because they think it foorces
them to buy a retail CD or soon DVD. What it forces is that people who are
not properly backed up lose what's on the drive. MSFT's own figures range in
the 75% and up range according to the Windows One Care Live team's blog--I
believe it's higher for home users. One Care Live and Vista certainly make
it easier to backup, but how much they will dent the awful figure ( a sign
of the irresponsible times) remains to be seen.

I wish I had a nickle for all the people who spent huge amounts of time
playing games or watching some airhead thing on TV when it would have taken
a fraction of time to back up. Some surprisingly sophistcated people in
other areas don't backup their PCs.

CH
 
You will not succeed only formatting the drive. You need to rewrite the
MBR. That happens during Setup. Install XP from the borrowed cd. It will
not be necessary to activate or anything else. Once XP is installed then
use the recovery cd to restore your own copy of Windows. The "borrowed" XP
will then be gone.
 
He doesn't need to activate. He just needs to rewrite the mbr. He can
install XP and then turn right around and use his recovery cd. No issues.
 
It will be intriguing indeed when Walt trys to use the "recovery CD" to
repair Windows. 99.99999% of recovery CDs and partitions from OEM do not
end in vital signs improving in the "recovery room"--->they end in trips to
the Windows morgue where a new incarnation after format births.

CH
 
There is one prodigious issue. Recovery CDs almost never recover. That
almost is above 99%. That's why MSFT won't discuss it, and no one will take
my challenge.

CH
 
Walt said:
Thank you Colin. I'll borrow a standard XP cd and use it to format the
drive. As you surmised, I have an oem recovery cd.
Click to expand...

If you borrow a retail CD you will not be able to activate XP as the CD
key will already have been used. Your own key will not work with a
retail CD. Your best bet is really to contact Dell and get their repair
tool as Colin suggested.
 
What I am afraid of is that he will still need a tool from the OEM to
reenable the recovery process. Hopefully, another poster was correct and
that he really only needs to set a different boot priority. I am not a fan
of recovery cd's either.
 
Colin--

I was hoping that the Dell links I found him would enable him to download a
format tool from Dell onto a disc that he could then use on his PC Walt
wants to format. I have some collections of MSFT format tools as well on my
XP boot that you probably know better than I do that MSFT issued during Win
2K that will work as well and places like www.bootdisk.com have them.

CH
 
Bootdisk.com is a great site.

Chad Harris said:
Colin--

I was hoping that the Dell links I found him would enable him to download
a format tool from Dell onto a disc that he could then use on his PC Walt
wants to format. I have some collections of MSFT format tools as well on
my XP boot that you probably know better than I do that MSFT issued during
Win 2K that will work as well and places like www.bootdisk.com have them.

CH
Click to expand...
 
Chad,

I tried the Dell links but they appear to require a floppy disk (A: drive)
which I don't have on any of my computers. I'm still trying to find a friend
or family member who has a XP cd and not an oem reinstall disc. I went
looking on google this morning for XP boot disc, but the ones I found so far
require a floppy disc. I will check out www,bootdisk.com tomorrow.

Thank you for your help. I'll get there, but I am pretty annoyed at
Microsoft for making this so difficult.

Walt
 
Walt--

I understand perfectly. I wouldn't be above walking into a random business
if I had to and asking to borrow one. One idea though. We've used this in
chats and forums when we want to help students with finals and papers or
anyone in a time bind.

I have no idea where you're located or what's available, but often
university libraries or other types of libraries have this media, not to
mention university IT departments that provide services and materials for
students, as well as their book stores and you sometimes can borrow one from
them.

Once in a pinch before I knew every method to fix XP, I wanted to replace my
old buddies ntdetect, ntloader and build a boot.ini file on install to fix a
no boot box, and I just walked into Office Depot and the manager was nice
enough to lend me an XP CD and the use of a computer for as long as I
needed.

CH
 
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