New PC old OS

[jmsrickland]

Can I install XP on a new computer that comes with Windows 8.

As far as I know when buying a new PC they all come with Windows 8. The store salesman told me that I cannot remove the hard drive from the PC, put in another hard drive and install XP because the new PC has hardware and other things that XP cannot support.

Is this true?

[Bonnie West]

If the new PC doesn't come with drivers for XP (and the manufacturer's site doesn't either), then there isn't much point in installing XP. However, you can still probably install XP in a virtual machine.

[Nightwalker83]

Why do you want to use Windows XP?

[jmcilhinney]

It really comes down to driver availability. Given the large installed base, most hardware vendors will still produce XP drivers. You should first check what hardware is installed and then try to source XP drivers. If you find drivers for all the hardware then you should be good to install XP either on the same drive or a new one if you want.

That said, there aren't many valid reasons to install XP if you already have Win8. I can understand not paying for an upgrade if your computer currently does all you need but I can't think of many good reasons to downgrade. I'd also be interested to know why you want to.

[jmsrickland]

I do not like Windows 8. I like XP. That's why I want to replace W8 with XP

[jmsrickland]

I was also told my another sales person that if I upgrade to Windows 8 Professional it allows for duo-booting and I can us XP as the other OS

[jmsrickland]

I don't understand this driver stuff. Exactly what drivers are you talking about? Drivers are software, right? So, where are these drivers?

If I were to install XP on a new PC wouldn't I be installing XP on a formatted disk and all the drivers that XP needs would be on the XP installation disk

[Bonnie West]

From Device driver:

In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver typically communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.

Can you tell us the manufacturer and model of this new PC? Perhaps their website still has drivers for XP.

[jmsrickland]

Bonnie,

I know what drivers are. My question was where are they (the ones you were referring to) since when I install XP on any PC the disk is blank and the drivers do not exist until after XP has been installed.
So how then can it be dependent on drivers as you so stated if no drivers exist? This is what I don't understand.

I can't tell you the name of the PC as I haven't bought one yet. I was just looking at new PCs and asked the sales person if I can take out the hard drive with Windows * and replace it with a new hard drive on which I will install XP.

[Bonnie West]

I know what drivers are. My question was where are they (the ones you were referring to) since when I install XP on any PC the disk is blank and the drivers do not exist until after XP has been installed.
So how then can it be dependent on drivers as you so stated if no drivers exist? This is what I don't understand.

Drivers can be installed after Windows is installed or be integrated in the installation process. Drivers can come in separate CDs/DVDs or be included in the Recovery Partition/DVD and can also be downloaded from the manufacturer's support site.

I can't tell you the name of the PC as I haven't bought one yet. I was just looking at new PCs and asked the sales person if I can take out the hard drive with Windows * and replace it with a new hard drive on which I will install XP.

You can, of course, swap the hard drives (and OSs). But the problem is, will XP be able to recognize the new PC's hardware? If the manufacturer still provides XP drivers, then there should be no problem swapping HDs. But if they don't, then XP will be limited to its generic drivers only (which most likely cannot fully utilize a particular hardware's capabilities).

[dilettante]

Few new computers come with drivers for ancient versions of Windows.

If the computer uses common components you can identify then you might be able to "shop around" at the support sites of the component manufacturers and find individual XP drivers for each component.

Sometimes you will be left running with generic drivers supplied with Windows when you get done though, such as a VGA driver for your video adapter. This is usually far less than optimal and won't support all of the video resolutions, acceleration, etc. the adapter is capable of. Audio can be another problem area and you may be left with no sound at all besides the motherboard speaker, internal flash card readers may not work, and so on.

If you want to avoid Windows 8 you might be better off shopping for a PC with Windows 7 preinstalled. These are getting rare now.

[Niya]

What a panic thread this is lol. XP isn't that old yet. Windows XP should come with enough generic drivers for all those little chips on buses on the motherboard for it to work right away. That just leaves the video, sound and network drivers. If you stick with Nvidia or ATI cards for video and Realtek for sound and network cards, you should be able to find XP drivers easily on the internet for them.

I still do installs on XP for people from time to time and I haven't really gotten problems for drivers yet.

[Lord Orwell]

I was also told my another sales person that if I upgrade to Windows 8 Professional it allows for duo-booting and I can us XP as the other OS

never trust a salesperson. EVERY version of windows since 95 supports dual-booting. You will most likely get the system to run with xp on it but you may not find drivers for your chipset and if the system has an ssd you might as well not bother. If you simply prefer the xp interface, there are start-menu replacements you can download that also have the system boot to desktop. And i'm not referring to stardock's offering. They charge. also sp1 which is coming soon for win8 is going to be bringing back the start menu. You have always had the option of using an xp theme in every version of windows since xp and it basically just kills all the eye candy.
let's face facts here. XP is old technology and if you have a sufficiently modern computer you will have to run the 64-bit version of xp just to access all your memory. This is going to make it even more likely that there are no drivers for some of your hardware since for whatever reason, microsoft decided to use a completely different driver architecture for xp-64 than any previous OSes.