I have searched, but cannot find the answer to this exact question. I found lots of info on downgrading... but I don't think that is what I'm really looking for. I have a friend who purchased a new PC from Wal-Mart which is running Vista. His old PC runs XP Home, so he has an XP disc. It was specially built, and has a retail edition. He is wanting to completely wipe his hard drive of Vista, and install XP Home on that one too. Er, actually, he wants me to do it. So my question is will the product key for his Vista be considered valid by the XP installation? I'm not even sure if all this is even legal to do.... He wants everything on his computer to be legit. Any help and or advice here would be great. Thanks.
I'm pretty sure that using your Vista Product Key will not work on an installation of any other Operating System. Although it's downgrading, it's still trying to use a code for something different, and shouldn't work. I suspect you would need to purchase a product key for Windows XP for it to install, and be legit. Hope this helps.
I guess his big problem with it is that it's still new, so there is alot of apps he used on XP that aren't available yet for Vista. I'm sure he'll find others with the same functionality or his favorites will be upgraded soon enough.
If the programs are popular, they will be modified, or even a new version made to work with Vista. I know most of my programs worked with vista, but I had a problem with a couple of programs needing drivers, which vista simply didn't have. Thats why I went back to my XP Pro. Shame though, I liked Vista
