Downgrading from Vista to XP from partition

DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
edited April 2010 in Science & Tech
I am trying to go back from Vista to XP. Here's the deal. I have a parition in the hard drive which would usually allow me to restore everything to it's factory settings (which were XP Home). Since I installed Vista, those restore files are still there but I no longer can use them. Before I could restart the computer, press some "F(numberhere)" key and I could do it without a problem. Now that I've upgraded, I can't and... well according to "eMachine's Customer Support" (which this machine is), I'm on my own. They don't encourage upgrading. Anyhow, I still have the OEM Key and the files from the partition are still there but they're useless now as far as I can see. Is there a way to reinstall XP back from those files or do I need to reinstall by other means and then just change my key or no? I don't have no restore discs or anything. Thanks!

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    You need discs. When you installed Vista, you overwrote the custom boot data that enabled you to launch the recovery partition.
  • clifford_cooleyclifford_cooley Arkansas, USA Member
    edited April 2010
    If you still have the recovery partition on the eMachine. You can access the recovery partition by flagging that partition as active with Disk Management.

    This is the purpose in the F11 key at boot. The F11 key temporarily flags the recovery partition as active and boots to the recovery partition. Now that the MBR has been over written with Vista, you no longer have the F11 key function. However you can still mark the partition active which is basically all the F11 key does while booting.

    I no longer have an eMachine but know from experience that this will work. My last computer was a "eMachine W3502"
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited April 2010
    thanks for the info cliff. at first it encountered an error, but then I just rebooted and it restored everything. Only thing now is that it's in a continuous loop wanting to restore each and every time it reboots. Is there a way out of this or that I can fix this? thanks!
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    You should just need to un-set that partition as active. Download GParted or your live-CD partition editor of choice, burn it to a live CD or live USB, and boot from that. It should show you all your partitions and their flags; remove the active flag from the recovery partition and make your installed partition active, I believe.
  • clifford_cooleyclifford_cooley Arkansas, USA Member
    edited April 2010
    I believe snark has you fixed up. Changing the active partition back is your goal now. A partitioning CD or BootCD will have the tools you need for this.
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited April 2010
    I downloaded and burned the image onto a cd and it boots but that's where I get lost. there's a list of commands that appear but I don't know how to use any of them. Is there something more simple I can use? I looked around in the website where I downloaded the cd image but I found nothing to help me in my quest to restore the OS. I used up my last cd so now I'm lookin for something more simple to use (for me at least) and something that I can put in a USB Drive
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