Always use the latest service pack!! SP3 for XP of course.
I have a dual boot setup for XP and 7. Favor XP because there are program that run on it that will NOT run on 7. Have 7 for some new games that will NOT run on XP. Best of both.
I moved this to the Windows 8 forum and changed the thread title to conform to the rules. Now let's see if we can help out with your problems. I'm going to address them a little out of order.
Quote:What will happen if I uninstall 8?
I was previously on VISTA.
Unfortunately there's no downgrade path available. Once you've gone to Windows 8 there's no way to uninstall it. Hopefully you did a backup of some kind before the upgrade. If not, that's something you should always do in the future. Even if you don't want to downgrade later there's always a not-insignificant chance of an OS update going horribly wrong in ways that can't be fixed without restoring from backup or installing from scratch.
Originally posted by JEFFRIE: No longer have Photo Gallery
No Windows mail
Both programs were deprecated in Windows 7 and replaced with the Windows Essentials (originally Windows Live Essentials) equivalents which must be downloaded. However the new versions are not exactly the same as the old and it seems a lot of Vista users consider the replacements vastly inferior.
I don't believe there is a way to get the Vista Photo Gallery working on Windows 8 but I know you can bring back Windows Mail. Unfortunately it requires you to have an existing Vista install to copy files from. If you have a separate machine still running Vista (or a backup including the required files) I can probably walk you through it.
However my personal recommendation would be to find a replacement which isn't tied so closely to Windows. If there's any lesson to be learned from the major changes over the years, particularly with Windows 8, it's that Microsoft will unilaterally change or remove any feature that doesn't fit their latest plans for Windows. This especially applies to any feature even tangentially related to software or services they're trying to sell - Exchange Server, Outlook, and various related cloud technologies in this case. The same goes for consumer-oriented features like their free mail clients.
My understanding is that an upgrade from any version prior to Windows 7 is supposed to result in losing your installed programs. Keep in mind that Windows 7 and 8 are actually quite different from an internal technical perspective than even Vista even though Vista and 7 actually appear pretty similar on the surface.
Did you have other programs installed that didn't disappear? If so, do they work properly?
Quote:Cannot show old files and programs and folders in normal text.
I'm assuming that you're talking about viewing them in File Explorer. Can you post a screenshot showing exactly what you mean?
Quote:D drive not being recognised
Is it an internal drive or external? PATA (IDE) or SATA? It sounds like a driver issue but it's hard to tell anything more (or even be sure about that much) without more details.
If you had publisher on xp or vista you need to upgrade to the newer version because the older versions dont work with windows 8 microsoft did this on purpose to pervent piracy of there office products and wait it gets worse if you dont have the latest version of nero it wont work as well thanks to microsofts new drm management system in windows 8 as for your cd drive not working several people have posted certain machines have exclusive drivers for there sata cards in there computers which creates the issue the drawback if the computer was designed with vista in mind you might not find a driver for 8 because the controller manufacturer most likely refuses to release a driver for it sorry
