XP on Vostro 1700?

Hi, just got a Vostro 1700 and I want to put XP on, the guide above looks great but is it just me or are there no audio driver for download from the Dell site? Will the 1420 drivers linked to in the walkthrough work on the 1700 even though they aren't desinged for it?

 

The only real trick to getting XP on the Vostro 1700 is coming up with an install disk that Microsoft won't put up a fuss about. If you can come up with a Dell reinstall disk with XP SP2 (I believe SP2 is required to prevent pci.sys bsod during the install due to the PCI Express graphics) you are in fat city. Now, unless you are unusually lucky and your install disk has the appropriate SATA drivers you will need to use nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ to create a custom install disk. Fetch from Dell's support site all the XP drivers for the 1700 then get the missing video and audio drivers from the Vostro 1500 XP driver page. Now armed with the XP install disk, the dell drivers and nLite you can create an install disk with every driver necessary for the 1700 (Important Note: Use text mode drivers for the SATA when you are faced with the option.)
After the install, the audio driver may need a little coercion. Running the driver install application from Dell will report no hardware but a reboot will cause XP to install an AAU driver after which the audio chip be recognized and allow you to point it to the appropriate driver folder (WDM folder, iirc.)

An alternative is to set the SATA emulation to ATA (turning off the flash as well) then installing with an old school install disk but I would recommend against this as you will take a performance hit and you cannot simply install the correct drivers and change it back, a la IDE RAID drivers.

Hope this helps, Dell told me they couldn't install XP on the 1700 when I tried to purchase an XP reinstall disk for it. Too bad, it runs excellently on that fine notebook. I'm certain if you could coax the 1500 XP disk out of them, it would work like a charm.

Cheers, Dave

 

I have Vostro 1700 with Vista and wanted to install Windows XP on it. I faced the problem with (unfound Hard Drive) and I read about using nLite and adding the missing drivers on it, and so I did. I downloaded the Hard Disk driver from Dell website and added it to nLite and created the CD. BUT I still have the same problem! Windows XP cant find any hard drive in my computer! I'm start thinking that the driver that I got from Dell website isn't compatible with my hard disk, even though I got it from Vostro1700's section.

Does anyone have any idea about this?

My hard drive is ST9160821AS by the way.

Thanks.

 

Hi. Could you tell us which drivers for audio did you use? Cheers

 

I work in serverland and I had a RAID card that needed a critical BIOS update. After the flash, it could not see any of the disks in the RAID. I checked with the drive manuf. and there was a critical flash for the drives themselves. You might consult the drive manuf. and see if they have any info or updates. Notice: Proceed with caution in pursuing this suggestion, if you value the data on your disk.

Do not neglect or skip any instructions.

unruly

 

Had the same issue. Don't use an OEM cd. Use a full version of xp.

 

Hi, I have followed most of these instructions - however...I end up with three unknown base system devices and a network controller (I'm guessing my wireless card). The wireless card linked is a broken link now and so I'm not sure what to do. I have the intel chipset drivers installed.