Acer Laptop - Trying to replace Vista with XPP

A friend instructed me to wipe Vista Basic from his brand new Acer Extensa 5210 laptop and install XP Pro. I told him that his warranty might fall over but he insisted.

So I wiped his hard drive (80gb SATA) with WipeDrive Pro and began to install XP Pro. When prompted ( "Hit F6 ") I installed the correct SATA controller drivers from a USB floppy drive (there's no inbuilt floppy drive in the Acer) and all seemed to go well.

But after Windows XP finished copying files and I hit Enter (following the prompt "Hit Enter to start installing Windows "), the next screen said something like "...can't find any hard drives, hit F3 to abort ".

The Acer site where I found the XP drivers is here:

Code:

http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/ex_5210.html

I notice that the site provides an XP BIOS (1.02) while the native BIOS loaded in the laptop is 1.07, for Vista.

Perhaps the problem might go away if I installed the XP BIOS?

Advice would be much appreciated

 

Thanks, TonyT, maybe it is the BIOS.

Which might explain why I was able to install XP on this SATA drive after I mounted it into a desktop PC (which has a three-year old motherboard). XP started, ran, rebooted and behaved normally. But as soon as I put the drive back into the laptop - no workee.

Acer Australia have refused to give me any help or advice about the matter - even though Acer Europe have made the XP BIOS and driver files available on their website.

Obviously toeing some sort of Microsoft line that says "You're gonna get Vista whether you like it or not ".

 

Your experience with the Compaq strikes a chord; I also learnt a lot about Vista in the exercise, and achieved a greater degree of familiarity than I really wanted.

It was a bit like a close friend insisting that I get to know their new pet, a rabid hedgehog with unpleasant personal habits, on the grounds that I would soon get to know and love it as much as they did.

Still, as you say, we'll all need to get to grips with the thing sooner or later

However, it does strike me as odd that Acer Europe would provide a complete collection of apps and drivers for what I would have thought was a relatively new model, the Extensa 5210, which is being offered to the public here with Vista. I mean, why make all that stuff available, including a special BIOS, if they didn't want people like me to take advantage of it, and substitute XP for Vista?

Unless the Extensa 5210 has been around for a while in an installed XP mode, perhaps with an IDE drive instead of SATA?

And trying to examine the BIOS on these branded laptops doesn't help either, as you know, as you can never get into them to see what instructions are programmed in, unlike regular BIOSs which are fairly transparent and configurable. At least, I don't don't know how to analyze this sort of software. Actually, when I come to think of it, it makes sense that the hardware limitations would be built into the BIOS, rather than the OS.

But that still doesn't explain why it's necessary to add the special data to the OS at the F6 point. Curious.......

 

vista is not a "rabid headgehog" it is actually a pretty good OS. sure, it needs to get some bugs worked out, but its a new program, what you expect? it is not ME 2, ME was a bad OS, but vista is having trouble getting all these people making drivers at their company for Vista. Vista is not all that bad, but it needs to be baked in the oven a bit more.

 

You're correct, greenday5494, it was wrong of me to say that Vista is like a rabid hedgehog.

It's actually more like a mentally handicapped, three-legged hippo. But I think you summed it up quite nicely; half-baked.

Look, it wasn't my intention to kick off a rant about Vista - there's enough of those cluttering the internet already; I just wanted to fit up a laptop with a system that my customer could handle.

But I'll say this: 99% of computer users didn't NEED a new operating system - all we wanted was something that worked properly, ie, XP without bugs.

And what have we got? A vastly more complex version of XP with a zillion more bugs, that will be superseded in a few years time when, as with XP, the programmers finally give up trying to fix it, and move on to their next brainchild.

Many people miss the main point of this whole business; it's all about selling and marketing software. And if the product is "new" and "improved ", it must be good, right?

Who cares if it doesn't work as well as the old one? It's prettier and it's the latest model - so get over it.

 

It seems that a few Vista users might be following this thread, so I'd be grateful for some information: Is the Group Policy Editor available in the Basic Vista versions?

As far as I can tell from trolling the net, Group Policy Editor IS available in all versions of Vista. But my own system is Vista Ultimate, which has GPE installed, so I can't tell if lesser versions have it.

If you have a version of Vista that ISN'T Ultimate, the way to find out if you can access the Group Policy Editor is to press\hold the keyboard Windows key (the one with the little flag icon) , then tap the 'R' key. This will get the "RUN" box. Type 'gpedit.msc', (without the quote marks, of course).

If the Group Policy Editor IS available, you'll see a window labelled 'Group Policy'.

Hey, this may not not be a BFD for you; GPE does a lot of things that won't interest the average user. But it can be very helpful to tech folks, and I'd be grateful to hear if it actually IS available in basic Vistas .

If GPE is available in basic Vista versions, it'll be a step forward; it wasn't accessible in XP Home, which is pretty much the equivalent of Vista Basic.

 

A good idea to dump Vista
Too bad you did not do a ghost of the vista before your upgrade ( or downgrade ?)
When you call Acer best not to let them on - especially if they mark it in their log

 

Thanks TonyT - so all versions of Vista currently have GPEdit, then?

VisionOf: Yep, you're right about the imaging (which I didn't do). Actually, I DID create the two Recovery Discs, but I don't think they'll work now that I've deleted the 10gb hidden partition. Still, it's no great loss - all that's gone is the gratuitous Acer junk that's typical of branded systems; Acer This, Acer That, Acer Blah Ad Infinitum, plus starter versions of more useless stuff, like Norton Internet Security or Office 2007. As I said earlier, it's all about selling software.

But, LOL, Acer tell me that if I WAS actually foolish enough to delete all their valuable software, they'll kindly reload the drive for me at a cost of only $66. Yeah, right.

And, no, I didn't give them any hardware serial numbers.

It's just occurred to me how great it would be if some of these people (Acer, Compaq, Dell, etc etc) would put out a range of empty laptops, so we could add our own systems. But of course, that wouldn't sell any software, would it?

 

Thanks, Arie - good tip