With Windows 7 Release Candidate expiration date is just days away, many users of Windows 7 RC asking how to downgrade to Windows XP / Vista. In this guide, we'll show you how to downgrade from Windows XP 7.
downgrade from XP to Windows 7
And if you want to downgrade to Windows Vista from Windows 7, visit our how to downgrade from Windows 7 on Windows Vista article.
1st Open the Windows 7 disk (usually drive C) and make sure you did not delete the folder Windows.old, which was created in Windows when you install Windows XP disk 7. Note that without the help of constituents Windows.old will not be able to downgrade from Windows 7
Windows old folder
2nd Now check the folder size Windows.old right-click and select Properties. Make sure Windows.old folder size is less than twice the amount of free disk space on Windows 7 (C drive). If the folder Windows.old size is twice as large as Windows 7 free disk space, disable System Restore and Disk Cleanup to get some space.
Old Windows folder size
Please note your Windows 7 letter, and a DVD drive letter before proceeding to the next step.
3rd Insert the Windows 7 installation disc into the drive and reboot. Press any key when prompted to do so.
4th Select language, time, type of keyboard and then press the Next button to continue.
Windows installation screen
5th On the Install Windows screen, click Repair your computer option to open the System Recovery Options.
repair your computer_thumb
6th Here you select the operating system, Windows 7 and Windows 7 note the drive letter before clicking Next.
Selection Windows
7th In the next window, click Command Prompt to start weakening from Windows XP 7.
Select the command prompt
8th First you must move the entire contents of your hard drive folder to Windows 7. So, enter the following commands one by one and then press ENTER after each command (here "D" is your Windows drive letter 7).
D:
Md Win7
Moving Windows Win7 \ Windows
Move the "Program Files" "Win7 \ Program Files"
Moving users Win7 \ Users
Attrib-h-s-r ProgramData
Move Win7 ProgramData \ ProgramData
Rd "Documents and Settings"
command of the first
9th You must also copy the entire contents of the folder Windows.old to disk. Again, enter all the commands below one by one and then press ENTER after each command.
move / y C: \ Windows.old \ Windows d: \
move / y "D: \ Windows.old \ Program Files" d: \
move / y "D: \ Windows.old \ Documents and Settings" D: \
Commands second
10th Another task is to restore the boot sector by entering the following command:
E: \ boot \ bootsect / nt52 d:
(Where E is your DVD driver & D letter is the letter of the OS)
bootloader successfully updated
11th Finally, restore the boot.ini file by running the following commands:
Attrib-h-s-r boot.ini.saved
Copy boot.ini boot.ini.saved
12th Type Exit and restart your computer to start using Windows XP
again. It's done! If you want to free up disk space, delete Win7 folder in the root directory of XP disk.
