Change Vista to Xp

I have an Acer Aspire M1500 desktop with AMD Athlon 64X  dual core processor. It has a 32 bt OS with Vista Home Premium sp1. In order to use my caseo handheld pc, I need an XP OS. Can you help me?
Thank You,
mammananny

[Moderator]

Travel to Acer's site and see if there are drivers available for that machine for XP...
If not i would suggest against it.

Thank you for your response. I am headed to the Acer website. I don't think there is any other way to sync my hand held device with a desktop. According to Caseo, it has to be on an XP OS.
Mammananny

You could install XP into a Virtual Machine such as Microsoft Virtual PC and run it from there under Vista. It might need a bit of tweeking to allow the PDA to connect to the VM, but it is possible.

Cameron Gray

(Or if you wait for Windows 7 you could use XP Mode)

Cameronray;

Thank you. That was the most logical answer I've gotten in six months!! I downloaded a partition manager and was about to go that route. Someone else did that on my desktop last year, and I have no idea how to undo the mess he made, but I'm reading a bazillion tech notes on it. Wish me luck, I'm no electronics wiz for sure!

It's a welcome surprise when people like you offer to help the technologically impaired like me. My laptop is still under warranty, and the seller still won't make good on a botched reboot. I know how frustrating it must be for IT techs to get requests for freebies in today's economy. I am a family and marriage counselor, and I get hits every day. I really don't mind. I just do for free what I used to get well paid for.
Thanks again

Mammananny

[Moderator]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_result&ct=res&cd=10&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7LZwXCQ71to&ei=JphtSvq7LI7kNdbV6PgG&usg=AFQjCNHgvgzAHnzdSqYoa0g6L9ivV2kcrQ&sig2=dy53Uh479pG1dyUMWsRVWQ

Travel to Acer's site and see if there are drivers available for that machine for XP...
If not i would suggest against it.

You advise against dual booting.  Why, is it problematical?  I was thinking of doing it.

you'd still need XP drivers for a dual boot....

[Moderator]

I've never advised against dual-booting....
As BC says you still need XP drivers though.

I've never advised against dual-booting....
As BC says you still need XP drivers though.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

[Moderator]

No problem...
All 4 of my machines have multiple OS's installed on them...one has 5...

Any need for me to use a 3rd party partitioner or will the vista disk allow me to accomplish the partitioning when I install the vista?

[Moderator]

Depends strictly on what other OS you are planning to install...
If it's XP you should have zero issues...
However Windows being Windows it's highly suggested that the older OS should be installed first...

Your mileage may vary.

I have xp in place.  I'm going to put vista in a separate partition on the same hdd.

[Moderator]

The Windows install CD should do fine...
How much free space do you have on that drive ? ?

450GB.  I intend to divide it in half, with 225 for each os.

[Moderator]

Plenty...