Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

[bgavin]

I am finding that downgrading a machine from Vista to XP isn't as simple as FDISK/FORMAT.

Drivers.



Some machines such as the Gateway boxes use proprietary driver combinations for the Intel and iTE chipset combinations. I suppose the same grief exists with the JMicron controllers.

Dell is pretty good about making drivers easily available. HP/Compaq is not, and Gateway is pretty much "yer f*cked".

I just finished an HP Pavilion DV9803NR latop. What a root canal.
The overly-obsequious HP dip shit in Bangalore was completely useless once he figured out I was downgrading Vista to XP.
He was admonishing me for downgrading Vista when I mashed the chat Disconnect button.
Hey dip shit, I've got your Vista right here...


So.... I got the drivers the hard way, by grabbing all the HTML files for every Service Pack from 30000 to current via an FTP copy. On my local machine, I can GREP for all files with DV9000 in the text, and make a copy of those files. I can further filter those files by GREPing for "Vista" and deleting those copies.

Sorted in descending (most recent) order, I open each .HTM and see if it pertains to any of my problem devices. Even though I built the machine with the full complement of DriverPacks.Net files, I still had a number of bad devices. Taking the newest SPs (descending order) fixed all my problems.

As usual, start with Microsoft UAA first, and build from there.

[Fatal0E]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

I have been doing a lot of downgrading lately, especially laptops.

I have not found one that I cannot do yet, but some make me scream.

Most of the time there is something that I cannot find the proper driver for so I just start forcing some in and eventually find one that works. I have also manually added the hardware ID string into INF files to make them install, can be a handy trick.

[shadow]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

I have also manually added the hardware ID string into INF files to make them install, can be a handy trick.

Hmm...I must learn more about this. I have heard about it but I have never done it. I have one driver which I would like to do this with.

[starfury1]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

yes they don't make it easy...glad so far I haven't been asked but dreading when they do
Esp with laptops....seems they are somewhat a close shop and getting help from who made them is probably pointless....there only made to work with Vista or some other BS....

Vista ...more minuses then pluses

I know of one laptop that runs like a dog with Vista home basic and thats the way they sold it with 512Mb (celron cpu I think)
and then wonder why people were taking them back!
XP probably would have worked OK
it might have been ok with 2GB or even maybe 1 but 512MB
It was like trying to run XP on an AMD K6 box..sure it works.... slooooowly

these site might help shadow

http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/inf-file.htm

http://gosh.msfn.org/infs.htm

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_tips.asp

not directly related but might be of interest and have some useful aspect

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

http://www.spc.int/it/en/general/una...k-drivers.html

there are probably better sites around, just some from a quick search

HTH

Cheers

[Bookworm]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

Just as an FYI, I found that many of the laptops that initially came with Vista (the ones with 512) have a slightly older version, with the same hardware, from the same manufacturer. You can't get the XP drivers for _that_ laptop "we only support vista on it!" but the older laptop that says "We only support XP on it" will only be a single revision different, with the same hardware - and you can try the drivers from that.

Just look at the photos of laptops from that manufacturer to find one that looks identical.

[gonzo0815]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

Been there done this with an fucked up Sony Vaio. What a pain in the as, especially those proprietary shit hardware.

Any way, got it half way stable and working. Actually, Sony has learned from their mistake and announced some XP downgrade support.
WTF those manufacturer think about building systems w/o XP support, when Vista has not get SP1

[bgavin]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

Sony is on my Do-Not-Recommend list. Support for those things is non-existent.

nVidia is getting onto my shit list in a hurry. This HP DV9803NR laptop has the 430 GO chipset, so is so driver-problematic I swear it was built by VIA... What sucks the worst with this nVidia implementation, is their driver bundle does not work correctly with BART-PE. I can image this box, but only to a USB disk. Network access under BART does not work. From the Google chatter I see, this is a chronic complaint with nVidia: not fully playing by the INF rules.

The nVidia chipset and video drivers don't work on this board (Quanta), so I had to dig out the various SP3xxxxx packs from the HP site and do it manually. Once I got it running properly, I took a base Ghost image of it.

The more I see of all the compatibility crap, the better I like the Intel hardware. It is fast, cheap, and easy to support. And compatible.

This HP laptop tends to over heat. I have an inside contact at HP, and I'm told overheating is chronic with HP laptops. HP is also on my Do-Not-Recommend list, although I will give them a shot at software repairs.

Vista was consuming 0.97gb memory while idling. What a pig. The processor is an AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-52, with a 166 MHz memory frequency. It performs adequately with 1gb of DDR2. XP/SP2 is committed at 167mb, and that is with Quickbooks 2005 running an update.

[zandrax]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

I agree: drivers are an issue.

First you have to identify correctly the chipset and install latest (or more stable) drivers: most times there are drivers for XP. Keep in mind that XP SP2 is required on more recent computers because previous versions can't recognize the PCI Express bus and hangs during install (and, of course, you can't disable the PCIe gpu on board...). Since most notebooks don't carry a floppy unit anymore, you ave to slipstream into a new XP cd at least the chipset driver.
For nVidia and Amd mobile graphic chip you usually have to tweak their drivers (add chip IDs to .ini files) or use already tweaked ones, such as Omega Drivers.
Later you can install secondary drivers: audio (HDA devices require a MS patch), lan and wireless, modem (usually it's a software modem which relies on chipset and audio chip features: their drivers are a real pain), touchpad (usually from Synaptics), pcmcia controller, firewire, bluetooth (MS stack don't work always, so alternative drivers do exist: a chinese company called IVR sells an universal driver for a low sum) and a lot of others.

Zandrax

[bgavin]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

I have slip streamed both Chipset and Mass Strorage drivers into my install CD. The lack of floppy/F6 install requires modification of the CD.

I use www.driverpacks.net drivers and built a boot DVD from their complete package set. This guarantees I will get a chipset and mass storage match. The rest I can install once the machine boots up. I use MVPCInfo, CPUZ and DevCon to audit an existing machine before imaging/fdisk. This gives me a list of hardware IDs I can use to locate drivers.

After experimenting with the above, I have concluded it is better not slip stream the remainder of their huge driver library. Machines such as the HP above choke on standard drivers, and they wind up permanently embedded in the OS. Better to get the machine installed just enough to install the correct drivers, rather than removing less than optimal ones.

I keen an external 500gb USB disk fully populated with my entire (huge) library. I find it indisensible for both drivers and temp storage of GHOST images from client machines.

[grss1982]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

After reading through everybody comments, I think an easy way to identify devices on laptops so that you will have an easier time of finding the drivers is using Linux.

I think those bootable linux distros like Damn Small Linux, SLAX, etc. etc. AND the "lspci" command would really come in handy.

[bgavin]

Re: Vista Downgrades & Other Root Canals

devcon.exe is 55kb, and I don't have to install or boot from anything. It spits out a list of devices using a batch file to call the command line interface. Very clean, very simple.

Mine is set up to create "c:\hwids.txt", since my devcon runs either from a CD or USB disk, and I want that list always in the C:\ root directly.

Once I have the device id, it is a simple taks to SEARCH \\usb-disk\driverpacks\*.inf for dev_xxxx. This gives me the location, and I can update the driver from there.