Hey folks, newbie to the Forum here, but not to computers. Have been using em since 1986.
Anyway, just bought two IdeaPad Y510 notebooks [about six weeks ago.] Absolutely love them. Actually got them at a bargain [$200 rebates on each, so came out to $600 for 250GB, 2GB RAM, DL DVD-RW, etc., etc.]
Like this member I have the same issue. The system works great with Vista, but as you can imagine, I have some favorite software that I have been using from the old days of Win 98, not too many but just enough that I want to install XP on any machine I have.
But I also NOW like Vista on the Y510. Vista has been out long enough that most bugs have been worked out and the Y510 is powerful enough to operate great, IMHO. So I plan on keeping Vista on the Y510, but I don't like not being able to install some of my old XP programs that will not work on a Vista machine.
So I did a Google search and it came up on this member's post.
When I talked to Lenovo tech support [who were EXTREMELY helpful, respectful and responsive] he suggested I could go to XP since Lenovo put up the drivers on its download site. But he also suggested I instead use System Commander or a similar program to boot up on my D partition which could have XP installed.
I have an old copy of System Commander [V 7.1] and I can upgrade to System Commander 9 for only $40. But I don't want to do that unless I can determine beforehand if that will work. It's not the money as much as the time involved in installing an OS, drivers, etc. [anyone experienced knows how long that takes.]
Out-Of-Context: About a week into getting the Y510 I decided I did not want Vista on the Y510 so I installed had the Y510 repartitioned, formatted and installed XP. But I got an error message when installing XP. It finished the install but the files I said to ignore must have screwed up something. So I used my Lenovo recovery disks and reinstalled Vista, etc. Basically did a restore.
All went well and I have now decided to keep Vista on it since I gave it a chance and have been working with it, to my satisfaction. But I still want to see if I can do the XP thing as described above.
Back to my questions: Anyone have experience using System Commander on a Y510 [or similar machine] and putting XP on the D partition? [As some of you may know, the Y510 comes partitioned with the C drive being about 30GB. Vista is on that and so is the Lenovo "one touch" recovery software [part of C drive has Vista and all the drivers to restore the machine back to its original state].
But the D partition [that on my machine is 180 GB] is "naked" or empty. I think I can install XP on it.
As I recall, since I never really used it, System Commander alters the MBR [master boot record] of the hard disk and when I turn on the Y510 a System Commander menu will pop up asking what OS [and partition in my case] I want to use. Is this how it works?
Thanks for the help. Like I said, the reason I am asking this is because I prefer not to spend 10 hours trying to get things back to the way they were should this not work out. [The Y510 has Office 2007, Adobe Professional, Zone Alarm, and other programs installed that I don't feel like having to reinstall, update, etc. You know how it goes.]
Bottom line: If I can install XP on the D partition that would be very cool.
Thanks again for any responses.
Message Edited by MichaelSF on 10-18-2008 09:39 PM
____________
This signature has been banned and the Member is suspended until the year 2039. And we will be watching out for you, chump.
goretsky
Deutsche Community 
Comunidad en Español
