Hello world, I've just been given an Acer 3260AWXMi with Vista home. Not a computer guru but can I reformat hd and load Xp? :confused:

Check the acer site and List that system.
Then go into downloads and set it to XP

make sure they have ALL the drivers for it and XP first

beyond that you run the risk of having to find the drivers for XP from the individual hardware manufacturers for each component..

You also need an install disk with valid License. I wish Acer gave them, but to my extent and knowledge, they do the instal partitions.

Thanks Rick & awaj, could be dangerous if I go ahead, but have decided as I got Vista home for free, why not keep it and learn about it. Still have my desktop with Xp pro for all my important stuff. Keep dancing.:)

to those who are not used to vista, it is a good idea to install xp, and of course i m the one who still uses xp.
you can install xp in your acer notebook, maybe some bucks need spend on xp.

You can reformat hd and load Xp.

You can reformat hd and load Xp.

Are you sure?

Did you read Rick's post about checking for the proper drivers?

Without XP versions of the drivers, then it isn't going to do any good to install it..especially the critical things like motherboard and video drivers.

Also if it is an EFI system as opposed to a BIOS then XP may not natively work..period.

The drivers for XP should be availiable off the Acer web site. If they are not, Acer should beable to ship you a disk for them, or direct you to where to get them (for a price.) (Just a warning, ACER Tech support is not the best, and their phone # is hard to find as it is not on thier web-site)

I have a Acer with XP Media on it which originally came with the laptop // I wanted to install Vista Premiun/ First I had to add 2g more to the existing 2g memory. After that i contacted the acer techs via email to guide me through for the install/ this is opposite from what you are doing I know / but the same scenario. After receiving the Acer tech guide as to how to do this it work with no problem. First as Rick mention [and this is a must for you to run all your entities with your laptop] You must go to the Acer site and download all the necessary drivers/ when you go to this site you will notice that there are also Vista drivers for that os sys/ When you install the drivers make sure you install the Chipset drivers first and than the video drivers// from there it really does not matter what sequence you install. I wipe out my HD and did a complete install Vista/ then i installed all the drivers for this os sys.
good luck