I have mentioned my friend who is struggling with Vista.........

By the time he had bought upgrades for PGP, Acronis, and several other pieces of SW

that he relies on to keep his computer secure, he calculated that it was cheaper to

go and buy a genuine copy of Windows XP Home for MYR300 (3000 baht)

The problem was installing XP when Vista was already on the machine.

We tried using a version of the Ultimate Boot CD that I had downloaded last

year, but it failed to recognise the latest chip set in the Sony Vaio.

We tried looking for a new version, but the links to Mirror sites did not work well.

We then looked at the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows.

This downloaded well and proceeded to create an .iso image for burning to cd.

It is a great programme, booting your machine with XP from the CD and giving a whole

host of recovery programmes. A must for anyone who supports PCs.

Using FDISK was a failure as it did not recognise the master boot record........

Another similar programme, MBR Wiz, also said the MBR was corrupted? (well it did boot Vista )

There was an option to write a Windows 2000/XP boot on the disk so we tried this.

It took some time to sort all this out, but we were relieved to see XP installing from the new Windows disk.

PS erasing the MBR means that you loose all the partitions on the disk, so make sure you have backed up

any data, and most important the latest drivers that you will need to make sure the machine performs

to its fullest capacity.

Ultimate Boot CD is very nice, I also use Hiren's Boot CD, which is another great tool for tasks like this, and frequently upgraded, too.