Many thanks for the helpful advice in the replies. One small point about
Ken Blakes comments on the D drive. Acer have said "Doing a restore back to
factory default will erase everything completely i.e. even viruses/trojans
on your C:\ drive. Restore back to its original state.
The D:\ drive will be left untouched as it contains your Recovery image file
which is hidden away." which led me to suppose that data files should be
kept on D as otherwise it would be erased.
"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:54:03 +1000, "Bill"
wrote:

I have an Acer Aspire L3600 mini PC, a great little second PC but for the
fact that it came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed in a "hidden"
part
of 'D'.


Almost certainly, Vista is preinstalled on C, not D. What's on D is
not Vista pre-installed but what you need to reinstall it--to reset
the computer to the condition it was in when it came from the factory.
And it's not "part" of D, it's all of it; D should be reserved for
that use, and nothing else should ever be written there, since doing
so can screw up the restoration info that's there.


It has a built in facility where 'C' can be wiped completely clean
and restored to its factory default condition,


Exactly! That's what D is for. This is the way most OEM computers are
done these days.


data etc on 'D' hopefully
being untouched.


Again, you should never write any data to D. That's *not* what it's
for.


I don't like Vista much and would prefer to install my full retail
version
of Win XP on this PC. I don't mind giving up Vista completely.

Acer's support is OK as far as it goes but they make it clear that they
do
NOT recommend this course of action ,saying that they do not support
downgrading the unit with anything other than what came pre-installed on
the
machine. They warn of the risk of "product failure".


I don't recommend it either. If Vista is new to you, your dislike of
it is probably mostly due to unfamiliarity. Give yourself enough time
to get accustomed to it, and you may very well find that your views
will change completely. But it's certainly your choice.


If the 'downgrade ' to Win XP can technically be done I'm willing to take
the risk but need a bit more help on the mechanics of doing it. I have
installed OSs on other PCs from scratch but this process, i.e. totally
removing a pre-installed OS which is in some hidden and protected part
of
the hard drive, appears to be rather more involved and I'm way out of my
comfort zone! I need help and advice.


First of all, realize that a downgrade is not possible. What you need
to do is clean install Windows XP. Clean installation is very easy and
straightforward. You boot from the installation CD and follow the
prompts for a clean installation. It will begin by formatting the
drive and wiping out everything there, so be sure you have first
backed up anything you need to external media.



Acer say that to run XP I will need to create a bootable disk with SATA
drivers otherwise Windows will not detect the hard drive when the CD is
run.
I think I've tracked these down on their download site, at least in the
driver download section these were the only ones to show up.


I don't know anything about the details of your computer, and it's
best to get all the info about drivers etc. that you need from Acer.


What's come up are a total of 6 for Chipset, Audio, Lan, Modem, VGA and
Wireless Lan. Each one is in a zipped folder.

Out of interest I compared these to the drivers listed for the
pre-installed
version of Vista. The chipset version number is identical to the XP
version
but the others have different version numbers and there is a additional
TV
driver for Vista Home Premium (the L3600 is media centre enabled).

So,

1. Are these 6 drivers in fact the SATA drivers Acer are referring to?


Check with Acer to be sure.


2. How do I create the bootable disk they refer to.
When I've installed an OS in the past I've used a floppy which was
inserted early during the
install process when prompted to do so.


It's a bootable *CD* you need, not a floppy



I don't recall there being
6 separate drivers though.


That depends entirely on what hardware you have.


I have an external floppy disk drive and wonder whether this could
be
used in this case? If not can anyone tell me how to do it and what the
procedure is when installing XP.


Again, check with Acer.


3. Is the removal of the pre-installed material simply a question of
formatting the entire hard drive?


Yes, and as I said above, that formatting is part of the clean
installation, and doesn't need to be done first.


I thought of abandoning the idea of
having two partitions, 'C' and 'D' and,


Again, your D is not for data, it's for restoration of Vista


on this PC, using external drives
for all data storage.


I don't recommend that. Store data within C, and use your external
drive(s) for backup. If you travel with this laptop, why would you
want to carry around any external hard drives? It just means more
weight and space you have to carry.


4. Is there anything else of which I should be aware?

Regards,

Bill

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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