Hello PCHF

I'm planning on buying a Toshiba Satellite A200-AH8 tomorrow. The Laptop comes with Vista Home Premium but I'm not a big fan of Vista. Like Aries, I would like to downgrade to Windows XP SP2 but always have issues when reformatting (i.e. accidentally erasing all my drives).

Firstly, I would like to know if it would be safe to downgrade to good ol' XP, and secondly, how to do so without losing any drives.

Second, if anyone knows anything about Toshiba Satellites, do you think I made the right choice? I need a laptop for college that can also handle several apps at once.

All your help is greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this

Hi ya, it should be simple and staright forward. Just incase you want to re install Vista at any point, create your recovery media first. After that reboot your PC, and access your PC's Bios (Usually F2 or delete) and change the boot order so that the CD Rom drive is first. Then place your XP CD in the drive, and reboot, and it will read off of it.

XP can handle as good as Vista several progs at once, the only problem would be the specs of your laptop but laptops bought today can handle it...

Robin

Thanks both for extremely quick replies!

@ MadGamer doesn't that keep Vista on my Hard Drive even after I install XP?

I also heard Toshiba Satellites had an overheating issue. Does anyone know where I can confirm this?

No it doesnt, as i said above create your recovery media first if you would like to upgrade to Vista again in the future. During XP Setup it will ask you to delete/create the partitions and format them, thus getting rid of Vista.

Hi Fadiez, in answer to your overheating question, I googled and found a number of results. It does seem like they can be prone to overheating but so can anything. Due to this I wouldn't let it put you off your purchase.

My family bought a Toshiba Satellite a month or so ago and while it does get warm (is to be expected with any laptop), I have not had any overheating issues.