Problems finding correct XP drivers for new laptop (getting rid of Vista)
- From: mcbill20@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:05:05 -0800 (PST)
One of my co-workers bought a new laptop with Vista on it but he wants
to run XP due to performance issues and all the problems with Vista.
He is only marginally computer-literate so he asked me to do the
conversion for him. I got the machine home and immediately made a
mistake-- rather than booting Vista and going into device manager to
see the device descriptions, I just booted from an XP CD and wiped out
the partitions. Next I installed XP. My assumption was that I would be
able to go to the manufacturer website and download the correct
drivers for this laptop.
I went to the website and selected the specific computer and then
downloaded all the drivers listed. One thing that concerned me was
that in several cases there were two or three different drivers and I
don't know which specific hardware is installed in this laptop. The
first and only one I was able to get working so far was the wired
network port. The wireless lan, audio, modem and two VGA devices are
still showing as invalid drivers in device manager.
I guess I sould provide some specifics at this point. The comptuer is
an Acer Aspire 5315 laptop.
When I first tried to install XP, the installation program said there
was no hard drive installed in the computer. I fixed this by going
into the firmware and changing the hard drive from AHCI to IDE mode.
After that XP had no problem with it.
In order to install the other unknown devices I did the following.
First I looked for a "setup.exe" in the folder for the specific
driver. If there was one, I ran it. If there was no setup.exe or it
didn't find the device I went into device manager and right-clicked
each problem device and selected "update driver". I tried the "find on
internet" option and as usual with Microsoft, it found nothing. I then
tried browsing to the different directories that had the downloaded
drivers for that device but except for the wired network driver, it
said that there was no driver found.
I called Acer tech support. Honestly, I didn't expect much because of
the sad state of consumer tech support in general (outsourcing, etc.)
and the fact that this laptop was a $300 end user product. I was
pleasantly surprised. I was only on hold for about 7 minutes and then
a live person that spoke English, was in the U.S. and was knowledgable
answered the phone. It turns out she was in Oklahoma. She was very
friendly. Unfortunately, she explained that this type of support was
outside the scope of what she could provide. I understand and have no
problem with that. She is sending me a Vista CD since it didn't come
with one. Overall I was very impressed with the Acer support. I have
been doing I.T. work since 1984 and I always kind of considered Acer
at the bottom of the barrel-- kind of like the Yugo of computers.
However, with the crappy foreign tech support that I've gotten from
Dell and HP these past couple of years I was sure pleased with the
Acer support.
I guess I am looking for recommendations on what to do here. I don't
mind spending more time on this but I would prefer not to if it will
be many hours and then I end up having to revert to Vista because some
of the drivers just aren't available. Has anyone in this forum done
this successfully? Should I be looking elswhere for drivers? Do you
think I will end up having to re-install Vista first in order to get a
correct hardware list?
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Bill
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