I would ideally like to use the dual boot system of having win xp home edition installed on my new "vista preinstalled" pc. however, when i tried formatting and installing a genuine copy of win xp home edition i couldnt do a thing because HP / or other havent written any drivers for the my pc's hardwareto use with win xp, so,my question is;(bearing in mind that vista is preinstalled on my new HP desktop), i want to install a copy of win xp using "dual booting" method, but, will i have any issues using my pc when i boot to win xp ? will my graphics card work for example ? will my ethernet connection work etc ?will my dvd drive work properly etc ? in other words does win xp just integrate the vista drivers somehow so that everything still works ? i would really appreciate any help and assistance with my questions, thank you.

You are posting your question in the Exchange server forum. Please post future Vista questions here: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=204&SiteID=17 But, I'll answer your question anyway. Dualbooting is the act of having two independant operating systems on your computer. The key word here is independant. They do not share resources with eachother, and therefore would not share drivers. Vista is a different kernel than XP, so it is very possible that your HP, that came with vista pre-installed does not have drivers for XP. Thats an HP question, not a Microsoft one. I'm not sure why you want downgrade your operating system, but if you just want it now and then, you may consider using virtual pc within vista instead. This would allow you to have a virtual instance of xp running while vista is also running. The virtual pc instance would provide the necessary XP drivers. Dualbooting: http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm Virtual PC: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

thanks for a swift reply, sorry if my question is in the wrong forum but as a first time visitor to the microsoft website i didnt find it so straight forward. your answer was helpful, and the idea of using virtual pc sounds great. i want to use win xp because after spending 7 months using vista i am just not happy with it in comparison, 1 example is media player 11 - its awful, has flaws and i much prefer wmp 10 ! but sadly microsoft in the name of progress cannot understand that some of their customers actually prefer previous software versions, and sometimes sequels are plan sh*te ! just while we on are the virtual pc subject, if you get 2 minutes i would very much appreciate it if you would explain how i could install and use win xp after i have installed virtual pc ? as a semi novice i do need some direction etc, thank you.