Hey guys, just got through a Dell inspiron i picked up dirt cheap in the sales that has Windows 8 on it......I would like to roll back to XP Pro 64, but having trouble booting from CD.
When I F2 into BIOS (InsydeH20) and scroll across to boot, there is no boot order like im used to??
I did a bit of playing around, the "add boot option" is a bit of a dead end as it just recreates duplicates of the options I already have but with user different names.....ergo I still don't know how to change the boot order, but at least I don't know how to do it with a cool name!
Think the key is going to be enabling the Legacy Option, disabling the Secure Boot and not using the UEFI.....but that's going to have to wait till tomorrow, and think I will burn off the back up disks in win8 first, before a blindly mash keys in a bios menu I don't even understand! got a feeling its the UEFI making my life hard, so burn back ups, google more, and hope someone far smarter then me can help get my beloved XP onto the bloody machine......before I end up giving windows 8 a fair chance!
If you go into UEFI BOOT it should show your internal drives by serial number or a list of bootable sources. This allows you to set up boot order for specific drives/cd-rom/remobable etc instead of the traditional 1st HDD 2nd Optical Drive 3rd Removable etc. Then in LEGACY BOOT you want to set the boot order by groups, IE: 1st HDD 2nd Removable 3rd Optical etc.It is relatively new on a lot of pre-assembled computers, this offers a bit more control should you have several internal HDD's coupled with optical drives and several USB drives since most newer computers/MB's have multiple USB ports on them.
However, with windows 8, a lot of the internal HDDs that come with the PC are prelocked. I'm still trying to find a workaround as I have the same problem with a cheapy PC that I picked up for my step-son. It wont even let me completely wipe the drive, it seems to have some sort of password protection or something that I've never come across before. Anyone have any experience switching back from W8? (W8 belongs on a touchscreen, not a desktop, it's the worst OS ever imo)
I mean you could always pick up a different HDD or SSD and load a different OS on the new one. It just seems like a terrible waste to scrap a perfectly usable 1.5tb internal drive