OK, So 86mcss has a newer Compaq Presario cq50-15nr laptop. We both hate Vista so we were going to put XP on. Well, Compaq does not have drivers for XP on there site. I was thinking of getting all the specs and trying to find drivers elsewhere. Anyone have any idea's of making this a bit easier?
Google search the hell out of your laptop + XP and see if there's any forum links or blogs with all the searched out drivers. To be honest, Vista is not that bad, what are your issues?
You may be screwed. A lot of laptop drivers are pretty vendor / model specific, and if Compaq isn't releasing them you may be hampered. My Gateway for example could be downgraded to XP, but there would be a lot of trolling the Gateway / laptop forums, trial and error with drivers, etc. Why do you want to go back anyway?
From personal and work experience, try to stick with what your system was designed for. Since motherboards for laptops are proprietary and are usually revised for different OSes, you're better off sticking with whatever your system came with. This applies to old laptops that want to upgrade to newer OSes like (windows 2000 to XP/Vista). Driver support is better this way and drivers are a pain to find for laptops. I have an m1530 from Dell that doesn't even have solid XP drivers built for the system and its main components. It was built for Vista and runs very well.
just install XP SP3 and see if drivers get installed.. chances are it'll install the right drivers, i wouldnt worry about it. if it ends up sucking or compaq doesnt want to help, then WINDOWS SEVEN!!!!!!!!
...still has driver compatibility issues. Believe it or not the Windows upgrade advisor actually works in this scenario. Try that first.
1 thing I do like about apple is that they really don't change there overall feel of osx, however, windows seems to change on every release!
Riiiiiight....b/c 95 to 98 to ME was a terrible change. 2000 to xp was awful. Vista to 7 is way too different.
Hey, all I'm saying is that they dramatically change there GUI while apple seems to be consistent. Not saying its a bad thing per se.
Don't wanna start a Mac vs. PC thread but Apple did alot to push forward the whole GUI standard we all take for granted today. History of the graphical user interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vista's fine if you strip all the crap off. It's just like XP but slower . I run it at work and it's solid, never crashes etc. It's a bit of resources hog though... but then again I keep an FTP client, photoshop, 2 browsers, email, IM etc.. 60+ proc at a time. XP's a lot more streamlined for that sort of thing but if it has enough balls...
Having used both Windows and OSX I have to say I like both equally well. The included iLife with Apple kinda tips the balance in favor of Apple though, until you can find semi-equivalent tools for Windows. Which sadly is beyond most computer noobs. But anyway, let's just get this out of the way... LINUX!
If your insistent on making the XP switch, download this: Everest Ultimate. It detects all your hardware and tells you the manufacturer. Then you'll have to do Google searches on each component not natively found by XP and do trial/error driver installs. For the most part every driver can be found, but proper chipset drivers can be a major pain. Expect several hours of this process. The hardest part you may face is getting the XP install to detect the hard drive. Many SATA controller drivers, especially those in newer laptops, are not native to the XP install disk, thus requiring utilization of the F6 install option where drivers are loaded in manually using a floppy drive. Since this is a laptop it's probably not very feasible to go this way. The other option is to build a custom install disk with the proper driver slipstreamed in. N-Lite has given me good success in building these disks, and tutorials are available, but this is another hour or two of time spent just to get started. Tweakmonkey stated it best. Though Vista has its drawbacks, it really isn't THAT bad of an OS if you strip it down of it's crap, i.e. UAC, sidebar/gadgets/aero.
Thanks for the help guys. I am going to try everything that has been recomended. As far as Windows 7 goes, is there a release that doesn't expire that is available for download?
Officially, no. W7 is still in Release Candidate. Until we see an RTM (Release to Manufacturing), most RCs will be 1) considered betas and 2) probably have an expiration date.
