Installing XP on a laptop

[cisamcgu]

I have an old laptop onto which I would like to install a fresh copy of XP. My question is really will this work or will I lose all the wifi drivers, graphics drivers, usb drivers etc and end up with a useless computer ?


Thanks

 

[courtenay]

1st. what os is currently installed ?
2nd. what make and model are the laptop ?
3rd. if it is an old laptop is it pretty close to the min spec required for xp. ?
4th. do you have any disks that came with the laptop ?


Let me know the above and ill give you a step by step guide you can print off.

 

[twowheelsgood]

You'll almost certainly need drivers for anything other than the basic chipset and a default VGA (graphics) driver. Even then you should download and update these. Install the latest service pack (3 I think) from microsoft right after the base XP installation. I download the "redistributable" rather than do the online update. These service packs often contain certified drivers and more things are likely to work.

Ethernet may work if it's an intel chipset, but others probably not.

USB will probably work but not in USB 2 mode until service pack 2.

Soundcards, older ones maybe, newer ones less likely or with reduced function.

It should be easy enough to locate drivers for these other devices from your manfucturers website. Problem is it's much easier to do these things when you have at least one other functioning computer in the house.

Most wireless adapters are actually built from chips from maybe 2 or 3 different manufacturers. Quite often other drivers will also work.

 

[ian turner]

If it has ME or 98 installed forget it as the minimum reasonable amount of memory to run xp with sp3 installed is 512MB and a ME/98 laptop will probably have 128mb possibly 256mb and the memory will either be unavailable or ridiculously expensive. Plus any existing drivers are unlikely to work. Aside from which odds will be that there won't be XP drivers available on the manufacturers site and you'll have to identify the various components yourself and download drivers from the component manufacturers website (assuming that the devices weren't obsolete prior to XP being released)
If it's already got XP installed and you're just trying to speed it up with a clean install then possibly a repair install might just work as it renames the old windows directory and you might be able to install the drivers by referencing the old window directory. But then you'd lose any additional software in the programs files directory for which you lack the cds/downloads for.

So, as mentioned by prior posters, what is the current state of the pc with respect to make and model, os, ram and disk size etc etc.

 

[cisamcgu]

Thanks for your replies, I will find out the info and get back to you

 

[HJ]

Backup everything you want to keep first, XP will format your HD before it starts to install it's self...

 

[cisamcgu]

Thanks for all your replies, it seems that the laptop is VERY old, and not up to running XP anyway

Cheers

Andrew

 

[HJ]

In which case try Linux...

 

[ian turner]

In which case try Linux...

Only those with a small footprint and minimal requirements as Ubuntu for instance doesn't like older machines.

 

[HJ]

Only those with a small footprint and minimal requirements as Ubuntu for instance doesn't like older machines.

There are loads of different versions out there, there is bound to be one that suits...

 

[ian turner]

Not very helpful suggestion to someone who couldn't work out that their old pc wasn't upto XP though.
Something like Puppy or Xubuntu perhaps though this is from looking at articles on Linux for older machines which seem to date back at least 3 years (the articles not the machines) so not exactly up to date.
The problem with suggesting using Linux to someone with limited knowledge on OS installation is of course that setting up a fully functional Linux system isn't quite as easy or "intuitive" as the linux fans would have you believe. Fun and games will be had trying to find drivers for your laptop to get it fully functional. It's a bit like those comedians who cheerfully suggest to someone buying their first road bike that they should try second hand even though they lack the knowledge to tell the difference between a bargain and a piece of junk.