M1730 drivers for reinstallation.

Not a question, more of an offer!

Some weeks ago, I had some fun (i.e, a frustrating 2 days) partitioning and installing XP, Vista and Ubuntu in a triple-boot configuration on my M1730.

I went through a rather interesting round of grabbing Intel AHCI drivers for XP and Vista x64 before I was awarded a system that would actually boot into Windows without crashing

In the process, I managed to assemble a 1GB SD card which held all of the required (essential) drivers for both pre and post-install for XP, Vista 32-bit and Vista x64. This includes the latest beta graphics drivers (suitably configured to recognise the laptop variant 8700 with SLI enabled).

I'm going to go through the process again very soon, due to a couple of stability issues which I'm trying to track down (probably the graphics drivers, but a clean reinstall is needed before I can pin it down).

So, if you would like the guesswork and headache removed from (re)building a from-scratch Windows install for your M1730, I could archive the driver collection, knock up a quick list of how-to and make it all available for download to fit on a 1GB SD.

One potential pitfall is Vista x64's lack of detection of the Ricoh 5-in-1 card reader. The workaround is to have a spare partition to load the drivers from. I believe Vista 32-bit detects the card reader and can load drivers from an SD card.

I had to slipstream the AHCI storage drivers into an XP SP2 disc, but that was very easy to do. It was either that, or constantly switch the BIOS between AHCI and ATA (not good on a multi-boot setup!).

I'm rambling now, so I'll shut up. Suffice to say, if you want help doing a fresh install, let me know.

 

I would love to be able to download this from you. How can we do this?