Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual

Backing Out of Windows XP

Hard though it may be to imagine, even after going to all of the trouble to switch to Windows XP, you may pine for the old days. Some people find Windows XP too intrusive and too much of a nag. Other people find too many incompatibilities with their old gear. Fortunately, Microsoft has made it very easy for you to back out, reinstating your older operating system.

Note

This option is available only if you upgraded your PC from an older version of Windows—not if you erased the hard drive and performed a clean install. Furthermore, you lost this option if you repartitioned your drive, or converted it to NTFS, since the upgrade process.

Ditching Windows XP

To get rid of Windows XP and reinstate the good old days, open the Add or Remove Programs program in your Control Panel. As shown in Figure A-5 at bottom, Windows XP Home Edition is listed among the other programs currently installed in your machine.

Figure A-5. Whenever you perform an upgrade installation, you actually retain both the old and the new versions of Windows. If, as the months go by, you decide that you’d like to reclaim the disk space being used by the dormant operating system, you can delete it. You can either delete Windows XP (top), restoring your older version, or you can delete the older version (bottom), committing to Windows XP forever.

Ditching the Older Windows

Conversely, if you just love ...