I just installed Windows XP yesterday

[adeypoop]

Ubuntu forces me to upgrade every 6 months by being so stylish and cool, open and free that i can't resist.

I agree with you paqman, installing windows is a big pain, especially if finding drivers is tricky which it can be with certain brands.

In fact it was after a painful reinstall of windows, which incidentally wouldn't let me install without first removing all my linux partitions that i decided to stop dual booting and just use linux. never looked back

[CharlesA]

I have Windows Vista RC2 installed on my new Gateway laptop and I'm trying to install Windows XP on it. However, when I insert the CD and open the setup it says that I cannot install an older version of Windows over Windows Vista. When I boot from the Windows XP install disc, it says that It cannot locate my hard drive. My hard drive is a Western Digital WD1200BEVS. I don't know what to do. Have any ideas?

I run into that problem all the time on newer machines when I need to install XP/Server 2003 on them. The BIOS is set for ACHI and XP doesn't support that out of the box - you need to find a driver for your motherboard/system or set the "SATA Mode" to IDE or Legacy to get it working.

@OP: What I usually do is start the install, then walk away and do something else. I think I only needed to install chipset, sound, and video drivers on the last XP install I did at home. I do image the machines with clonezilla when the install is complete, so I don't have to do a reinstall again. Saves me a hell of a lot of time.

[Paqman]

Installing Windows is easy.

Hey, I never said that it was difficult. Just that it's a pain. I've got all the drivers I need to get started the disk that came with the mobo, so that wasn't an issue. It just takes ages to install all 20 or 30 drivers and apps one-by-one, and you can't automate the process on Windows. Which sucks badly.

I don't like faffing about with OSes. I find sitting in front of a machine clicking next, next, next until my hair reaches to the floor and I die of old age to be a pretty unsatisfying experience. Folks who like to tinker about with PCs would probably find it less grating than me, but personally I can think of a lot of stuff i'd rather be doing.

[CharlesA]

I thought you could add packages to install after the installation is completed when using nLite.

[Diluted]

Hey, I never said that it was difficult. Just that it's a pain. I've got all the drivers I need to get started the disk that came with the mobo, so that wasn't an issue. It just takes ages to install all 20 or 30 drivers and apps one-by-one, and you can't automate the process on Windows. Which sucks badly.

Some drivers and applications have silent switches, so you might want to investigate that and then put it in a batch file.

[Paqman]

Some drivers and applications have silent switches, so you might want to investigate that and then put it in a batch file.

I'll be imaging the install once it's complete.

[CharlesA]

Images are so very nice.

[frncz]

Just having to install a 25-digit identification code when installing XP is a pain, apart from having to remember where I last wrote it down.
Also, getting the updates to work takes a long time. Yesterday, there were 70 updates that needed to be downloaded when I installed XP in virtualbox on my Ubuntu machine. Several required keyboard prompts for approval and installation.

And then, I had to repeat a similarly long process to install Office!

The reason why I need XP and Office is because I need Solver in Excel. The openoffice Calc equivalent does not work properly or runs very, very slowly (even the Sun beta version), on my large data files.

On the other hand, Calc and gnumeric handle more than 400k rows, whereas Excel is limited at 32k rows.

[cascade9]

I thought you could add packages to install after the installation is completed when using nLite.

You can. Makes things a lot easier IMO. Yet another reason why I like nLite

[CharlesA]

You can. Makes things a lot easier IMO. Yet another reason why I like nLite

That's good to know. I wonder if I should use nLite more, but since I image all my machine after 1 install, I don't think it would save me a huge amount of time.