Downgrading from Win7 to XP

[ArtikasK]

Hi guys!

First of thanks for helping me out! Don't know where else to turn to for advise.

I have a HP dv6000 series laptop that originally came with Win XP media centre edition. I upgraded that to Win7 Ultimate edition around 6 months ago. Due to some recent issues I'm forced to reformat my harddrive but i first have to downgrade to XP and then upgrade to win7 otherwise the nvidia graphic chip starts acting up due to driver computability. 

Now my recovery partition is still sitting on the harddriver but pressing F11 or F10 at startup won't boot me into recovery mode anymore. To top it of i never created recovery dvds. But as I was saying the partition is still there.

Is there any way for me to access it to restore back to xp?

Thanks in advance! 

[HaggisCat · Accepted solution]

Click on Start > right click Computer > Manage > left column, find Disk Management. Find your XP recovery partition there and right click and choose to mark it active. Ignore the warning sign. The next time you boot up it should start the recovery into XP.

 Do not press f10 or f11 for this procedure.

 If this does not work you will have to order some XP recovery disks form HP if they are still available.

[CherylG]

I'm not sure how reinstalling XP and then going to Windows 7 could prevent a driver problem since Windows 7 requires a clean install on an XP computer. Maybe you just need the proper Nvidia driver after the install. What is the full model of your DV6000 series? It should be listed on the Service Tag on bottom. P/N will also help. Locating Model Number

[ArtikasK]

Hi Cheryl!

The dv6000 model (sorry not at home right now so i cant go into details) i have, has issues with the graphic driver when running win7 on a clean partition, the only way to bypass this is to have win xp, update the driver and then upgrade to win 7.

Thanks for the input!

[ArtikasK]

Amazing! Thank you so much! worked like a charm.