Downgrading Sony VGN-FZ460E from Vista to XP Pro

Hello everyone!

I've read a bit about the troubles of downgrading Vista Home to XP with Sony products. My boss has a Sony VGN-FZ 460E notebook and would love to downgrade to XP Professional.

I've used NLite and Univeral Extractor to create an XP Professional bootable installation disk and slipstream in most of the XP drivers that I could find for the unit but there remains one large problem:

Audio

Although MSConfig thinks that audio is on at boot up, I cannot find drivers that will work for the HD Audio. Or perhaps I should restate that, I have Sigmatel 6.10.5614.0 drivers and one prior version, neither of which seem to work. I can install the audio codec for the high definition sound but the audio device cannot start, even though it is enabled.

I know that this particular device is not one that is "allowed" for a downgrade. I'm willing to put in some extra effort to try to get this done.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

I completely forgot about this posting!

I'm sorry. I was able to get this done (and then immediately made a backup image so that I would *never* have to do this again ). It was an odd combination of loading one controller, loading the high-def software, uninstalling the controller and adding new drivers. Done in the right order, it finally worked.