Successfully Upgraded My New Laptop from Windows Vista to XP!
Yes, I said UPgraded.
As I mentioned a little while back, my old laptop went skydiving off a counter without a parachute and went kaput on me. (It fall down go boom.) My wonderful new laptop, on which this is being typed, is amazingly wonderful. It's uber-fast, super quiet, and surprisingly not a lap scorcher. (Not to mention it looks totally bitchin'.)
So anyway, the one ginormous problem I had with it was that it came pre-installed with Vista (Yuck!
) and Toshiba refuses to offer any support in providing the appropriate drivers for downgrading to wonderful Windows XP. I wasn't sure how successful I'd be, but I'm now running this beauty with XP Pro with about 98% proper hardware functionality, and here's how I did it...
The first hurdle was attempting to install Windows XP. When I first booted with the install disk I was presented with a very ugly message, something like "There was no hard drive found." The problem is that many notebooks nowadays have a SATA controller, but XP was not designed for such an unexpected situation.
Ugh. No problem, right? All we need to do is locate the driver and tell the installer to use it. Oh, wait. The only way Microsoft allows you to provide a driver for any hardware during installation is to stick it on a floppy during boot. Oh, what's a floppy, you ask? Right. Floppies are no longer existent on new laptops. After locating the SATA controller drivers, I used a wonderful program called nLite to merge the drivers onto a copy of my boot disk. Yay! (A fantastic step-by-step demonstrating exactly how to add your SATA controller's drivers to your Windows XP boot disk CD.)
After installing, a quick look at the hardware shows that most devices aren't recognized. It took me days, but I was able to find drivers that seem to work for all the hardware on my Toshiba Satellite A205-S7466 with a couple of unfortunate exceptions. 1) My HD-DVD drive is unable to play HDDVD disks. 2) The same drive seems unable to burn discs. 3) The FN keys (function keys) don't work, so I can't turn up/down LCD brightness, among other things.
Hopefully at some point those broken features will work, but for now, I'd rather be on XP with those limitations than on Vista without. (XP has an idle footprint of ~200MB, while Vista eats up a minimum of a whopping 1GB always.)
That's my tale. Perhaps I'll upload my drivers for others trying to get past the same obstacles I faced...
As I mentioned a little while back, my old laptop went skydiving off a counter without a parachute and went kaput on me. (It fall down go boom.) My wonderful new laptop, on which this is being typed, is amazingly wonderful. It's uber-fast, super quiet, and surprisingly not a lap scorcher. (Not to mention it looks totally bitchin'.)
So anyway, the one ginormous problem I had with it was that it came pre-installed with Vista (Yuck!
) and Toshiba refuses to offer any support in providing the appropriate drivers for downgrading to wonderful Windows XP. I wasn't sure how successful I'd be, but I'm now running this beauty with XP Pro with about 98% proper hardware functionality, and here's how I did it...The first hurdle was attempting to install Windows XP. When I first booted with the install disk I was presented with a very ugly message, something like "There was no hard drive found." The problem is that many notebooks nowadays have a SATA controller, but XP was not designed for such an unexpected situation.
Ugh. No problem, right? All we need to do is locate the driver and tell the installer to use it. Oh, wait. The only way Microsoft allows you to provide a driver for any hardware during installation is to stick it on a floppy during boot. Oh, what's a floppy, you ask? Right. Floppies are no longer existent on new laptops. After locating the SATA controller drivers, I used a wonderful program called nLite to merge the drivers onto a copy of my boot disk. Yay! (A fantastic step-by-step demonstrating exactly how to add your SATA controller's drivers to your Windows XP boot disk CD.)
After installing, a quick look at the hardware shows that most devices aren't recognized. It took me days, but I was able to find drivers that seem to work for all the hardware on my Toshiba Satellite A205-S7466 with a couple of unfortunate exceptions. 1) My HD-DVD drive is unable to play HDDVD disks. 2) The same drive seems unable to burn discs. 3) The FN keys (function keys) don't work, so I can't turn up/down LCD brightness, among other things.
Hopefully at some point those broken features will work, but for now, I'd rather be on XP with those limitations than on Vista without. (XP has an idle footprint of ~200MB, while Vista eats up a minimum of a whopping 1GB always.)
That's my tale. Perhaps I'll upload my drivers for others trying to get past the same obstacles I faced...
12 Comments
darkrowanThis is the exact reason I like Dell. No, really. They keep all their drivers, per model, up on the dell site. Even as far back as Win98. Makes the Down(Up)Grade easier.
And what the heck am I running here? I get at least a 512MB footprint on my XP box at home AND work. Strange stuff.
MarineGunrockFoot print? More like humongogigantabehemothlytitanic footprint. Mine is only at 1.59GB as I write this - at I'm only running basic. Good thing I have 4 GB of RAM. Bad thing that Windows only recognizes three.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Ubuntu not an option? Or you could make it a Hackintosh.
Farhad2000The HP Pavilions also have drivers for downgrading their new Vista bundle OS systems back to Windows XP, with the function keys and other hardware driver support included.
I been planning to do the same with my laptop but removing all my videos from the 200 GB HDD over to the network seems like an utter pain right now.
gorgonheapI need a new home computer but I'm afraid to have anything to do with Vista. Why do I have to be such a technotard!?
MarineGunrockGorgon: Build one!
GrimmInteresting article here about XP vs Vista on speed tests.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203975
gorgonheap, you can build your own like MG suggested or if that isn't your thing there are still some PC manufacturers like Dell that give you the option of ordering some of their systems with XP.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/precn?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
blankfistOr, you could run BootCamp on a MacBook Pro, and you'll have zero issues with installing XP (plus you'll have a Mac partition, too... oooOOOOoooo). Though, there's no way around the "lap scorching".
MINKin snowy soviet union lap scorching much benefit feature.
windows used only for to see beautiful outdoor nature covered from snow.
needing license for window is bourgeois capitalist conspiracy.
karaidlI love licensing... "It's OUR operating system, but you get to use it! Go ahead, you paid a couple hundred dollars and now you can do anything you like except figure out how it works! No peeking!"
KrupoMy system is handling Vista just fine. I decided to experiment with the SpeedBoost gimmick feature, jamming a 1GB USB stick in the USB port on my monitor. My monitor gets a cool red side-glow and when I engage in super-intense games goodness I think there's more awesomeness. I should probably run some proper benchmarks to see if there's a real difference. I think all the footprint crap that would otherwise go in the swap file just sits on the stick so I think it's a fine use of the free key the CIRA sent me for being a member.
choggieI did the same for a new hp pavillion....it was a bitch to find the damn drivers to get the soundcard to work.....finally got it to work, by adding driver after driver for the yellow question mark list, untill I got the right one.....had to buy my ip buddy a frikkin bottle of rum...he took an additioal 2 hrs to get it done......
oh and hey lucky....don't feel stupid for droppin yer laptop....my Dell inspiron was run over in the case by a truck tire....cracked the display, I am using an external monitor...but all else is fine.....Vista Bloweth
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