Vista to XP without Bootcamp reinstall

I've been using Vista via Bootcamp for a while and it's been fine, but now I'm using VMware and it's just bogging down my computer too much. Since XP is less demanding, I think it will speed everything up.

The problem is I have a lot of programs and other things I don't want to delete and try to reinstall. On a Window computer I would just pop in the disk and replace the OS, but I don't know if I can do this on my Mac.

Anyone tried this with success?

No, I suggest you run BootCamp and remove your Windows partition, then re-run Bootcamp again to re-partition your disk so that you can install Windows XP cleaning.

I doubt that it would be any easier on a PC anyway. A reinstall is the best option.