11x and XP, are there drivers?

hello there, i'm only now delving into buying some alienware laptops, and the first one i've ordered is the 11x though by summer a 15 and 17 will follow.
what i tried to find briefly in the forums, and could'nt quite find explicitly, is if the 11, 15, or 17 have xp drivers.
i'd like to remove the original drive they'll come with, pop in a secondary drive (ssd), and then install xp on them. i know about the merits of windows 7 and all, but for what i plan on doing with them i need xp32 on them.
thanks for letting me know if people are able to get xp32 on any of the alienware models, take care and enjoy the day.

 

might be easier to just upgrade to win7professional and use XPmode. then you don't have the headache of finding drivers,installing xp and optimizing.

just a thought

 

Yes, XP mode as long as you don't need 3D graphics, it should work great.

 

Each word in this is sacrilege when it comes to owning an Alienware

XP?

No graphics?

Yikes!

 

.... why....... would you do this. XP is dead.

I'm sure it would run fine on the M11X however.

 

You van install http://www.virtualbox.org/ + Win XP on top of Win 7.

I would recommend staying with either Linux or Windows 7. Xp has been a savior as long as Microsoft was pushing Vista. Windows 7 is actually not that bad.

 

XP isnt a shipping OS on the unit so I dont see why there would be drivers for it.

As others have said, Windows 7 is a good experience. Just go with that. Virtualization will work also, but there is additional overhead.

 

if your really interested in getting xp on ur m11x, pm me

 

tx cpaqf1, i dont seem to have the priviledges here to PM you, perhaps you can PM me first and i cant respond to it? id love to be able to know before i start on putting xp on this, tx for the offer, take care

 

cpaqf1 i am also interested in doing this! i understand that we have the vm option but i'd like to install it directly to a partition. if you know how to do this, please pm me as well!

 

I think you need 10 posts or smt to be able to pm, first thing you'll need is to find the chipset name of the m11x

 

I heard XP mode is garbage. Save yourself some money and use a third-party visualization software like the one from VMWare.

The VT enabled one is the SU7300.

 

thats a cpu mate

 

thanks just for tellng me it was possible, as i got a c300 ssd and put xp on it, and successfully got all the latest drivers for every component as well as aliens command center, working in xp32. no hiccups, no yellow exclaimations, perfect. now to move onto the 17x model with xp32, once nvidia cards come back to the fold, tx again

 

Forget XP, I want to get Mac OSX running on this if at all possible.

I got 500GB, what else am I gonna do with it?

 

man i want xp on my m11x!!!! how did you do it!

 

I may sound like a noob lol, but i installed XP on my Studio and popped the driver CD in and it had drivers from XP and up. Maybe its just because i have a Studio

 

The M11x almost certainly wont have XP drivers created for it.

We have a good chance though. Intel might have XP drivers for the chipset, nVidia should for the GPU, Realtek probably will for the sound, etc etc.

Good chance i think.

NO clue why you'd want to though....

 

Problem is that the video drivers are hybrid for both Intel an nVidia. You can't just install one or the other, it has to be a special driver supporting both, which is released by Dell/Alienware.

 

true that. i found all the drivers for every component so far. i'm just afraid of installing it now haha i wanna know how terranaut did it

 

what do you think would happen if i installed each display driver seperately? i have the IGP drivers, and the gt335m drivers. is there any possibility that i could switch between the two via right clicking the icon in the taskbar?

 

I believe that's been tried, but every time you switch graphics, it asks to install new drivers. If you go into the BIOS you can switch to "Discrete" GPU, but then you will always have the nVidia GPU on, and lose your battery life. No switching to Intel integrated GPU.

 

what if i went into the device manager and disabled the discrete card and enabled the IGP? i wonder if that woudl work.

 

when installing xp, i used intels chipset drivers and intels achi drivers. the integrated webcam was installed by windows update tho creativelabs has the driver for xp. the synaptics pad well thats from their site directly. the atheros wired driver was from atheros directly. the wireless card from dell directly. the relatek soundcard from realtek directly. the alien command center, well just copying the folder from the original win7 drive over to my xp ssd and it works fine for setting leds. that leaves the video, and for that, i installed the intel ones just fine when the discrete card disabled in bios, then i enabled the discrete nvidiacard in bios and installed that one.
so in order to switch i have to go to the bios, and then the right driver is loaded up automatically, theres nothings popping up or issues. the single downside to it all is switching manually in bios. im sure someone could create a software switch to change it within windows (adjust the bios setting) but i doubt someone will do that anytime soon since most have moved to win7, but it should be possible.

 

Will these video drivers function on the r2 model

 

Terra, can you run a benchmark of your choice? I'd be curious as to how much faster the xp install is than the win7.

thanks in advance

seer

 

That post is more then 5 months old, and he only has 6 posts up till now, I don't think you're going to get an answer

 

XP does not have the proper switching capabilities that Vista or Windows 7 have. Switching relies on features that were introduced in Vista. The best you will get is pre-boot switching in the bios. XP can only work with one GPU at a time when it comes to Switchable Graphics. Note: The Nvidia GPU will not work in XP at all with the R2.

As for benchmarks seeratlas is asking about you might as well just look up benchmarks for the GeForce 330M on xp and Win7. (XP is way past its time and Microsoft has put out an OS capable enough to replace it with Win7.)

 

Latest Drivers and Benchmarks for XP Here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/511106-m11xr1-xp-drivers-here.html

I have uploaded a complete driver pack, as well as the ability to control the lights!

Enjoy

 

If you don't mind me asking. At this point why XP? I haven't found a game that doesn't run using Win7 and battery life should be better with Win7. Not to mention SSD support.

 

Believe it or not, I still keep an old XP Pro machine around because the interface is awesome. It flows so much better than Vista/7. Granted, I've tuned 7 to the way I like it but if I could have XP back in 64 bit without all the glitches that the 64 bit version had, I'd do it in a heart beat.