Farewell Vista, Hello XP

When you're ready to do it (not yet!), moving program data to Windows XP is easy enough. Instead of XP's My Documents, Vista stores data in a User folder   that will bear the name of the current user and contains subfolders for documents, pictures, videos, contacts, and so on. Vista allows you to relocate these folders by simply dragging them to a new location. So, before you overwrite Vista with XP, do the following:

  Copy or relocate (right-button drag and select Move) your User folder or folders to a partition or drive that won't be overwritten--for example, the D: drive. Keep in mind that every user on the computer will have their own folder, so you need to relocate or copy all of them. And don't forget the Public folder.

  If you've been using programs that allow it, export data to a safe place for later import   when you've reinstalled XP. More on this later.

  Once you've installed XP, either drag the user folders back to XP's My Documents, point My Documents to the folders'   new location using Properties, Target, Move, or simply access the data where it resides.

  Import your exported data back into your third-party apps after you've reinstalled them.

There is data hidden in your User folders that you may or may not need (the default e-mail repository, for example,   is here). To see it, open your User folder, select Folder and Search Options from the Organize menu, select the View tab, and make sure Show hidden files and folders is selected.

Close the dialog box, and you'll see a folder called AppData;   it can't be moved like the other User subfolders. Open it, browse it, and if you see anything you might need, copy it to a safe place. (You could skip this step and grab it later if you discover you need anything, since it will have been copied when you made your backup image. But copying it this way makes it easier to access.)

Don't install XP yet! You're nearly there, but a few more details   must be   dealt with.

The Mail Mess

In my case, transferring the data I'd accrued using Vista's native apps back to my XP apps was the real problem. I'd used Vista nonstop for 60 days, and I retain all my e-mail correspondence with vendors to cover my, err, let's say posterior. Just copy it back?   That's not so easy, as   Microsoft decided to revamp (not for the better in my opinion) the way Vista and Windows Mail stores messages and contacts.

Where Outlook Express stored messages in database files and contact information in the single-file Windows Address Book, Vista and Mail store every e-mail and contact as a separate file--a more versatile approach but also considerably less efficient and inadvertently responsible for the auto-complete bug I mentioned up front. In addition, it makes Windows Mail very slow compared   with Outlook Express.

Vista Mail's address export function worked fine for the contacts. Before reinstalling XP I exported to both vCards and a .csv (Comma Separated Values) file, which is basically a text file with one record per line and each bit of information separated by a comma.