Ok, I'm running an HP dv6500 laptop that I just got for Christmas. It runs pretty fast, but Vista has been giving me some problems. Everything from screwing up my music when I run AIM (even 5.9) to my right-click not always working. It's a RAM leecher and I'd much rather just have XP. But I have a few questions...

1) How do I switch from Vista to XP? Is it easy to do?
2) Will it improve my laptop's speed any?
3) If I were to dual-boot Vista and XP, would that waste any resources?
4) If I uninstall Vista, will I lose any files?

Basically I want to be able to stop using Vista without losing my files or having to move them to a flash drive. I'd also like my computer speed to stay the same or increase. What's my best option?

Hi

1. It's quite of a hassle to downgrade to XP and you will be forced to backup your files in order to do the downgrade (or sotre them on a different partition, if you have multiples)
2. If you got it for christmas, than that laptop is Vista compliant. There might be a few driver issues because some laptops do not support XP anymore, so you will only find Vista drivers. Vista consumes more RAM but you can disable the visual effects (like I have) and you will get less ram usage.
3. You can dual boot if you install Vista last. Installing XP right now will override the Vista boot manager and you will only be able to boot into XP. To my knowledge there is no way of avoiding that or repairing it, as Vista and XP use different ways to handle booting. In terms of resources, having 2 operating systems implies having more HDD space occupied.
4. Yes

4. Backup might help you