Downgrade to XP

[Michael.BCW]

Laptop: VPCEF3E1E

I am trying to downgrade this Windows 7 machine to Windows XP, however when doing this its gets to the screen 'Starting Windows' which is when the install process should start, and I get a Blue screen indication error:

'STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)'

I have seen suggestions to change SATA operations from AHCI to ATA mode, but I cannot seem to find the option to do this, and do not know for sure this is the reason for my problem.

[nimbystripes]

You can provide more information from the Blue Screen. It actually states everything about the error. It might only be possible that you are not allowed to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP unless your default OS is Windows XP.

[Blencogo]

Hi Michael,

I have not seen that blue screen but I think you will find that the problem is that XP does not support SATA Hard Drives.  The XP installer is unable to recognise your hard disc.  XP does not contain the SATA drivers.

There are several ways round this and changing the SATA mode to ATA is one of them - unfortunately this is not possible on your Vaio.

The simplest way is to load the SATA drivers at the start of the installation by pressing F6.  You can load the SATA drivers from a USB Stick or from a USB connected floppy disc drive (we forget how old XP actually is!).

Alternatively, you can make a slipstreamed installation disc with the drivers added.  Google for 'Nlite' for details of this method.

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

For more information on this, Google for 'Installing XP on a SATA Hard Disc'.