That's not quite correct. Corporations with a volume license agreement or
Software Assurance can downgrade any copy of Windows they like. For the rest
of us there is a way.
If you own Vista Business or Vista Ultimate (regardless of whether it is OEM
or not) you can downgrade, but only to Win XP Pro, Tablet Edition or 64-bit
Edition.
If you own Vista Home or Vista Premium then you cannot downgrade. Also, if
you own an upgrade version of Vista you cannot downgrade (but presumably
you'd have a copy of WinXP in that case anyway!)
If you meet the above criteria, you need to get hold of a WinXP CD and
install as normal. When it gets to the activation bit, choose to ring up.
Explain what you are doing, and give your Vista product key.
It is explained a bit here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cbd-699b0c1
64182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf
-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Walden H. Leverich
Sent: 28 April 2008 14:52
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] downgrade a notebook from Vista to XP
Mark,
IF (note the IF) you acquired the license to Vista as part of a
corporate agreement with MS (Open, Select, EA, etc) then the licenses
include the right to run a back-level copy of the software. That is, a
Vista license is also an XP license, an Office 2K7 license is also an
Office 2K3 license, etc. You will need your own copy of the media, and
you'd need to contact MS licensing for the key (or use an existing
volume key). And you can run one _or_ the other, not one and the other.
:)
However, IF you got the Vista license from retail or OEM (as in, with a
new laptop you bought from Dell) then you do not have back-level rights
and you'd need to buy a license for XP.
-Walden
midrange.com
