Azaran on 4/8/2010 at 01:38
Hi. I recently bought a new computer with Windows 7 Home Premium (Acer Aspire AX1800, 640 gb disk, 4 gigs of RAM), and I want to install XP over it, since Windows 7 has brought me nothing but problems in the few days I've been using it. My XP cd is a full version, and I've installed it successfully on other computers with no problem. However, here when I restart the computer to boot from the cd, it doesn't work and goes straight to the Windows 7 startup screen. I go to the boot menu, select my dvd drive as the boot drive, and it's like the computer simply ignores me and just boots Windows 7 directly regardless of what I select :(. Any help would be greatly appreciated
TBE on 4/8/2010 at 05:24
First of all, a new laptop will not have any Windows XP drivers easily available to you. It likely also uses a SATA drive, which you'll need to F6 drivers for anyway during the XP install. I'm not saying you cannot install XP on a brand new computer, just know that it's going to be a pain in the ass to track down drivers if they are even available. A good scan of your manufacturer's technical problems forum, much like this one, may have a user who's already found appropriate drivers. You may lose functionality of a few things if there aren't drivers. I had this trouble 2 years ago with a new laptop, so I imagine that your even newer laptop will have even more issues.
Ok, so get into your BIOS menu and look to change your boot order. I never liked those manufacturer "Hit the Blah-blah key to boot from a different device" things. I always set up every computer to first check CD/DVD drive, then USB and/or floppy, then hard drive. You should be able to get the installation disc to at least boot for you by changing BIOS.
You'll probably need an external floppy disk drive with the SATA drivers on a 3.5 inch floppy for getting it installed at the very least. These drives are like $30 at a Bestbuy store, or see if you have a friend that can do it for you. I've heard you can change your installation disc with something like NLite to add the drivers directly to it. It will burn a new disc for you, merging the F6 drivers and your original installation.
Ok, that'll probably get you started on installation. Be prepared to spend a lot of time screwing around with the SATA drivers for your laptop, and subsequently finding any drivers for the sound. The modern laptops have a much different architecture than XP is used to. They combine several elements into one driver sometimes, like sound and disk I/O. I know, it's weird. I had a devil of a time installing XP on my Compaq CQ-70. Once I got it all installed, it works flawlessly though. I'd recommend making an image of the hard drive once you get all the bugs worked out. You never want to go through that again.Fuck I need to read better. I'm leaving the pertinent info about laptops scratched through. It's valid, but not for his question.
Get into BIOS and check the boot order. Usually it's the DELETE key. Hold it down while computer boots. If you don't get to BIOS, it may be the F2 key. Try that.
You'll still need a SATA driver disk and a floppy drive. You'll eventually need to find some drivers for your new motherboard things though, just like a laptop, but it'll probably be a lot easier to find drivers.
Found some drivers for you on the (
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/downloads_gd.html) Acer downloads page. Make sure you click the box above the file list, and select Win XP Pro or Home 32 bit.
Azaran on 4/8/2010 at 05:46
Thanks a lot, I'll try that :thumb:
Renzatic on 4/8/2010 at 05:46
Sounds like he's not even getting to the point where it requires he pops in the SATA drivers. I won't matter if he has the drivers or not if it's just ignoring the XP disc and going straight to 7.
I'd recommend setting your boot order from the bios instead of using the boot menu. Usually it doesn't make a difference, but I've been in situations where I had to go set things up in the bios because it wouldn't look for the disc when going from the boot menu.
And what problems are you having with 7? From most peoples experiences, it's about as rock solid and stable as you can get (sans OEM bloatware). It might be easier to fix whatever problem you're having there instead of wiping your drive and going through the trouble of reinstalling XP.
edit: should've read more of TBE's post than the last line. Do what he said. :P
Azaran on 5/8/2010 at 02:19
Quote Posted by Renzatic
And what problems are you having with 7? From most peoples experiences, it's about as rock solid and stable as you can get (sans OEM bloatware). It might be easier to fix whatever problem you're having there instead of wiping your drive and going through the trouble of reinstalling XP.
Well, my Adobe CS2 suite won't work in Windows 7 x64. I looked for help online, and all the advice I found went along the lines of "No, it doesn't work in Windows 7 and there's no patch or solution. So get a more recent version that works" :nono: .
My usb keyboard which worked fine before in Win XP, now has this erratic mind-of-its-own thing where sometimes I have to press a key 3 or 4 times for it to actually type, and occasionally I press a key and it types it 10 times on its own. Plus now I no longer have fog in my Thief 2 games, because the ddfix patch can't handle fog in x64 systems. So no it hasn't been a walk in the park:( Though apparently Vista is 10 times worse so I've heard, so maybe it's not all bad....
Azaran on 6/8/2010 at 03:22
I'll try that, and keep my fingers crossed :sweat:
Weird, mine doesn't work. Must be an Nvidia problem or something. Though I had read in the ddfix thread that "when DDfix is used with windows Vista/Win7 x86/x64 and nVidia cards, FOG is broken". I was kinda hoping someone had found a solution for that.....oh well :(
Brian The Dog on 6/8/2010 at 10:41
Make sure you're using the latest version of DDFix, it was broken in previous versions but has subsequently been fixed.
Azaran on 23/8/2010 at 03:59
Thanks . I was using an older version, and only realized now that it wasn't the latest one. I got my fog back :cool:
