Vista to XP Downgrade on Laptops with No Floppy Drive

For those of you that don’t know, Microsoft provides the ability to legally downgrade your copy of Vista to Windows XP if it’s Vista Home Premium or higher on your laptop. The only requirement is that you have a copy of an XP CD to do this.

However most new laptops have SATA hard drives in them and you cannot access them during the Windows XP Installation sequence. When you try and specify a driver by pressing F6 it automatically asks you to insert a disk in your floppy drive and obviously that is not an option unless you have a portable floppy drive.

Don’t fret, there is an easy solution. There is a program called Nlite that is free to use and allows you to create a bootable XP cd from existing media. What it will do is allow you to integrate the SATA drivers into the installation CD so you have no need to hit the F6 key for the floppy drivers.

You can also integrate service packs and set other options with the program. Goodbye floppy!

-RP