XP on Vostro 1700?

I tried searching, but did not find this....
Has anyone posted a full walk through of how to get XP onto a Vostro 1700? When I ordered mine, Vista was the only option...
thx!!

 

My vostro is still somewhere in the pipeline, but i am definitely interested in this as well. I am afraid Vista is too bling-bling and too slow for my likings ;-)

If i could i would have ordered the Vostro 1700 with XP Professional, but it was indeed not an option.

 

There have been multiple posts on how to put XP on a vista machine. Search is your friend, so is google.

 

Here is a complete walkthrough for Inspiron 1420 (AKA Vostro 1400). Apart for few device drivers, rest is same for Vostro 1700. You can download XP drivers for 1700 here.

 

The Inspiron 1420 walkthru (linked above) worked perferctly for me. A couple notes:

1) Dell has added more XP drivers for the vostro 1700, check their site first. Otherwise, the drivers in the walkthru will work for the 1700.

2) I didn't have the problems described installing the sound drivers.

3) the web cam drivers from Dell gave an install error (but haven't tried to use it yet)

4) installing new (non-Dell) video drivers were the only confusing bit not explained in the walkthru.

I wanted the driver from nvidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_162.18.html

before you can install it, go here:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers

and download the INF file (move the cursor over the INF column, you'll see you can download it separately from the driver set) - it's called "NV4_disp.inf". Replace the file in the nvidia driver setup folder with this one.

5) there's a process associated with the nvidia card called "nvsvc32.exe" (or something like that) that runs on startup. It doesn't seem to be necessary, but has the annoying property of accessing your HD constantly (the non-stop clacking drove me crazy in an otherwise quiet machine). In the task manager, it's the process that's constantly using CPU time. I kill it instantly - no problems, just blissful silence.

 

With the news of no SP1 until Q1 next year..If I get a 1700 I'll definitely be going this route. I'd still like to think we could bend Dell's ear on making XP available on the model.

 

If you order on the phone they might be able to do XP.

When I got a quote for a Vostro 1700 the guy offered me Vista Basic.

 

Nah I tried that a month or so back.

 

I heard from our Account Person at dell that they won't be adding XP to the Vostro line till November. Of course this could change but that is the last he heard.

 

Well that's at least promising but still difficult to fathom why some models can ship with it but the 1700 doesn't at this time.