Need to get XP over Vista

[S.D. Davis]

Hope somone can help. We purchased a Acer 7520-5185 that came with Vista.
We are a Telecommunications company and all our phone software run on XP.
They will not run on Vista. We contacted Acer, but they will not help us
they say they only support the hardware with Vista. We need to get XP on our
computer. We paid a guy $400 to do this and use our XP disk from old
computer, but after about 2 hours all he did was load Parallels Workstation
and this does not allow some of our USB ports to work nor does it allow our
modem to work at all. Is there some way to load XP directly on our Hard
Drive (get rid of vista) and get the drivers for all our hardware to work.

 

[Mick Murphy]

If Acer tells you that there are no XP Drivers written for the hardware, XP
won't run on it. BUT!(Acer can be very unhelpful!)

Did you look on Acer's or the motherboard Manufacturer's website to see it
XP drivers are available from there for your model number?

One thing to try!
Go to the setup.exe on the software program that you want to install >
Right-click on it> Properties > Compatibility Tab >Install in XP SP2 mode.

Also, if the XP disk is from an OEM pre-installed XP computer, you can not
move it to another computer.
If you find the drivers, in BIOS set computer to boot from CD/DVD drive 1st,
have XP disk in Drive, reboot, load files, delete existing vista
parttition,fromat, install XP

Cheers!

 

[John Barnes]

VMware has products that support USB on guests. I have no idea about yours.
As Mick said, you cannot expect an OEM from another machine to work, license
is not valid and there may be slipstreamed drivers for the original machine.

 

[Tom Ferguson]

Apparently this model was available earlier with XP installed. Rather than
using an OEM XP version, you will have to install a retail version if Acer
will not supply it to let you downgrade from Vista to XP. If so, you will
have to make sure you have all the drivers for the hardware Acer uses in
that notebook. This might have all you need.
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/tm_7520.html

You could run a system compatibility check before you do the actual install
to make sure you have all necessary drivers available.

Tom
MSMVP 1998-2007

 

[luanmikevu]

I still use XP a lot, so I would recommend going to the Nvidia.com website to
download most of the drivers -- to get XP going w/ video on the laptop. As
for the other device drivers to get XP working, pull up the listing of
devices in Vista mode (hardware manager) that is installed for the laptop.
Using that list, you can look up original manufacturers for the supporting
software/drivers. I'm about to buy an identical laptop, so I'm figuring that
it might have nvidia chipset in addition to invidia graphics. (system board
components could also be sourced form Nvidia such as the nforce chipset. so
drivers for that chipset is also downloadable from Nvidia.com for windows XP.
In fact, they have an auto-configuration software that will check your
computer for all nvidia components for you.)

Don't forget that a lot of incompatibilities can be resolved by installing
XP first, just to get networking going for lan connection. Then, use windows
update to install all recommended updates. After that, goto microsoft
download and install small program to mark the computer as able to "update XP
ServicePack3". Once that is done, just run automatic windows update on the
laptop so it would download the ServicePack3 for Windowx XP. At that point,
all the wireless protocol would be up-to-date for the laptop to run in
WindowsXP and wireless lan.

Note that you CAN'T install service pack 3 by downloading the stand-alone
exe file. It only works through microsoft update interface, e.g. "Windows
Update" icon in start panel. I've already tried many options, but that's the
only method that works.

I used to work for telecom (B3 computers, etc...), so I feel your pain.
Please feel free to call me directly if you want to talk in details. Email
me, at
luanmikevu---at---comcast***dot**net
(please dont spam). and I'll reply w/ phone number.