SimpleSi Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 I bought a machine recently from one of my normal suppliers and although I'd asked for one with an XP downgrade disc, it came without and my supplier said that MS have stopped anyone selling machines with downgrade discs with them Can anyone back this up or was I just being fobbed off regards Simon
HarryMonkey Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 Nope, you're not being fobbed off. Your supplier is correct.
tommccann Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 had the same issue! seems xp downgrade has gone the way of the dodo
SimpleSi Posted December 2, 2010 Author Posted December 2, 2010 Just found a piece of paper in the box " Use of Microsoft Windows XP End of October 2010 Microsoft stops the shipment of OEM Downgrade Media fro Microsoft Windows XP together with a system. " (bold is on original paperwork) It goes onto say that I can order downgrade media (at a cost) until the end of July 2011 and of course that I can use XP Mode in Win7 regards Simon
KK20 Posted February 8, 2011 Posted February 8, 2011 MS still let you download XP from MVLS. Of course you need a correct key to work with the downgrade option.
Poco Posted February 14, 2011 Posted February 14, 2011 phone the manufacturer directly. some still offer the downgrade discs.
Bev Posted July 25, 2011 Posted July 25, 2011 I know htis is an old thread, but I am having a nightmare with this issue. I am quite furious that we appear to be forced to upgrade before we choose too. We are a small school, and everything is currently on XP using Ranger to manage desktops etc, with Server 2003. Well, I ended up buying an Windows 7 Acer Veriton as a test case. I was assured it would run in XP mode, but if not Microsoft offer downgrade rights to XP. However, I managed to join it to the domain but it's not picking up user desktops and none of the printers seem to want to install, plus it's not going to be the same look & feel as the rest or the machines, and in this situation that was an issue. So, I decided to downgrade it to XP BUT it simply won't install XP. Acer haven't provided an XP disk, but I have a selection of XP disks from other manufacturers. (HP, Toshiba, Samsung, Stone) It doesn't seem to matter which disk I use, it appears to start and then it just stalls after a few minutes. So I don't know what to do - do I spend time trying to get W7 to work, or trying to install XP. I've spent far too much time on both options so far and had no success with either.
FN-GM Posted July 25, 2011 Posted July 25, 2011 I was assured it would run in XP mode Do you know what XP Mode is? It wont work just like an XP workstation, XP mode is a virtual machine running XP inside windows 7. To be honest its time to move on, XP was replaced 5 years ago and Windows 7 was released 2 years ago. Thats a while in the IT world...
Bev Posted July 25, 2011 Posted July 25, 2011 I now know what XP mode is, but I didn't at the time. I was under the impression that it was 'dual boot', which some machines do appear to offer. I had also investigated XP downgrade rights, and felt assured that I was within my rights to put XP on the machine if it didn't do what I needed it too. However, that is proving difficult. it's very easy to say 'move on', but I am the sole technician in a small school. 3 years ago we were sold server 2003 and 32 PCs for our IT suite which all run Windows XP. We also have around other desktops around school, and laptops used by staff. They are all on XP. I need to put a couple of computers in classrooms. It's not appropriate for them to be different to the rest of the school. When the IT suite needs replacing in a couple of years, then I expect we will move to W7, but it's not something I want to do at the moment.
FN-GM Posted July 25, 2011 Posted July 25, 2011 it's very easy to say 'move on', but I am the sole technician in a small school. 3 years ago we were sold server 2003 and 32 PCs for our IT suite which all run Windows XP. We also have around other desktops around school, and laptops used by staff. They are all on XP. I need to put a couple of computers in classrooms. It's not appropriate for them to be different to the rest of the school. ah that's nothing upgrading 20 servers and 700 clients this summer Do you have any kind of microsoft volume licensing?
Jamo Posted July 25, 2011 Posted July 25, 2011 I now know what XP mode is, but I didn't at the time. I was under the impression that it was 'dual boot', which some machines do appear to offer. I had also investigated XP downgrade rights, and felt assured that I was within my rights to put XP on the machine if it didn't do what I needed it too. However, that is proving difficult. it's very easy to say 'move on', but I am the sole technician in a small school. 3 years ago we were sold server 2003 and 32 PCs for our IT suite which all run Windows XP. We also have around other desktops around school, and laptops used by staff. They are all on XP. I need to put a couple of computers in classrooms. It's not appropriate for them to be different to the rest of the school. When the IT suite needs replacing in a couple of years, then I expect we will move to W7, but it's not something I want to do at the moment. I always thought with a VLK you could always downgrade w7 to XP provided you had the licences? Is that not the case?
Bev Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 I always thought with a VLK you could always downgrade w7 to XP provided you had the licences? Is that not the case? I don't have volume licensing, but you are allowed to downgrade from W7, however I can't get the media to do it.
SYNACK Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 I don't have volume licensing, but you are allowed to downgrade from W7, however I can't get the media to do it. You'll need to get a clean OEM or retail Windows XP disk and you will probably have problems finding drivers as some hardware built into todays PCs does not even have drivers that go back that far and if they do you need to track them down individually. Start working with 7, having a different machine is fine, the kids will cope and the teachers can deal. By solving the issues now with 7 you'll be set for the future and it also gives the teachers an opertunity to catch up with technology. TBH Windows 8 is sheduled for the end of this year so if you wait much longer the gap is going to be even bigger and will cause you even more hassel.
KK20 Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 (edited) If you have access to MVLS you can generally download XP install ISOs from there. Thats the ISO I used to use. We have moved over from XP to W7 in phases. The only downside is having two sets of profiles for everyone (mandatory so not an issue with profile migration between OS). Ref your original issue with desktops, if you DONT redirect desktops then the W7 profiles are .V2 profiles therefore different to the original ones - they DO NOT share between V2 and original. If you redirect desktops (which you should think about doing!) then I dont know - it works for us with mixed OS PCs (50% W7 after this summer, another 25% at christmas, remainder next summer). If the OS is 64 bit then you will need 64 bit drivers installing - on a 32 bit OS you can "push" the drivers from client to the server if necessary. Modern machines may well have no XP drivers available short of checking the website you may not be able to install XP on some machines. Edited July 26, 2011 by KK20
Haptic Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 Hot topic this one. As well as Edu we have a mountain of Commercial clients all reluctantly facing a full network upgrade to W7. BUT If anyone is interested in possibly some of the last XP Pro/W7 Dual load laptops in existence Acer TravelMate 5742 Core i3 - 2.4Ghz 3GB DDR3 RAM 320GB HDD Webcam..........£360 Ex VAT Joe
chrbb Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 I had windows 7 running on server 2003 without any problems, I took the plunge with W7 by starting off with a couple of staff laptops, we now have half the suite XP and half with W7, the children are very adaptable. (Junior school btw) Give us some info on your setup and p'haps we can help with makig W7 useable within your network.
Bev Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 This is where I start to look ignorant, as I am not even sure if I can answer the questions.... We have Server 2003, we use Ranger to set up the User desktops, profiles, permissions etc. Are they roaming or mandatory, I'm not sure. All Staff have the same desktop, All kids in a specific year group have the same. When they log on, the 'My Documents' is their own My Documents no matter where they are. We use a logon script to set up printers and shared drives. The shared drives worked, the printers didn't.
chrbb Posted July 26, 2011 Posted July 26, 2011 (edited) Sounds as though you have roaming profiles then or mandatory with redirected My Documents ! To check if they are mandatory - locate the profiles on the server to see if they NTUSER.dat or NTUSER.man files. Then do a search on Edugeek for setting up W7 profiles, there should be lots of threads! My printers are setup with logon scripts, make sure you have windows 7 drivers on the server for the printers, I did find that I had to authorise the printer driver at the very first logon as administrator, after that no problems Edited July 26, 2011 by chrbb
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