Downgrading an Aspire 5517 to XP

[maniacalmichael]

I've read several posts on here talking about the downgrade process to XP & used their suggestions without success on this puppy. It's an Acer Aspire 5517 which came with Windows Vista. Downloading the Vista drivers off of Acer's website does not work. The ATI card gives me messages that the install manager failed to initialize, followed by Catalyst Install Manager failed to initialize package manager. When the install manager does show up, it starts the install & then locks up (no response, shows that the program is attempting to detect hardware) so I kill it in task manager after waiting 5 minutes to see if it can recover. The comp is using windows XP Pro, I installed every update I could from windows along with dotnetfx since several install programs seem to have problems installing without the service packs & dotnet.

Any suggestions other than telling boss he needs to upgrade to windows 7?

Currently use windows 7 at home & dig it's capabilities. Have not had any problems with it all.

Argh, of course I find the solution after posting this message. Took a bit of digging on AMD's website, they specifically state several times that they no longer support OS's that are not sold with the product, but AMD does offer the solution in their support/driver area. No more ? next to the VGA display. It's the legacy driver listed among many for the chipset/model #.

 

[multiscreenz]

A lot of laptops won't run XP anymore. I had the same problem with a few laptops. I'd just stick with Windows 7. XP is better than Vista, but 7 is better than XP I think. Quite a bit actually.

 

[maniacalmichael]

Sadly dealing with a Vista OS to begin with. I resolved most of its issues but still have 3 ?'s in it's device manager that I'll ignore. All seem related to the motherboard's chipset. SMBus, Network Controller, VGA (even though display apater is now recognized). Annoying as I hate to leave a computer or project unfinished, but I've done the best I can do on it for the time being. Someday soon I hope to talk them into the big Windows 7 upgrade, or setting up all the acer netbooks & everything else into loading it's OS off a local server. . . someday. Tough to do with a non-profit organization.