As most of you know, I am no fan of Windows Vista. Arguably, it is on par with Windows ME - which was a total flop. Almost every business customer that I have still runs XP or pays me to install XP on their new Vista pc's. They can't stand Vista's lackluster performance, DRM overhead, absurd RAM requirements, and odd behaviors and quirks.
Formatting a drive and installing XP is not a big, except on Toshiba laptops. Their driver support, even if the laptop was built during the XP time, is marginal at best. I've spent more hours digging around the 'Net looking for Toshiba drivers than I care to count.
Recently, a client of mine needed a laptop faster than I could get one from Dell. Against my better suggestion, he purchased 2 Toshiba a205-s5825 laptops, both with Vista. Naturally, he wanted to run XP on at least one of them and so the saga begins.
First, I formatted the drive. Ok - no big deal, but when I rebooted to an XP CD with SP2 slipstreamed in, it refused to see the HD. Hmmmm. I checked the drive in several partitioning utilities and sure enough it was there.
Next, I figured that XP just wasn't seeing the SATA drives. That's common, but the on many recent computers the BIOS will allow XP to see SATA. As most of you are aware, to install 3rd party SCSI or SATA drivers so XP will see a drive requires a floppy drive. Yes, the venerable floppy still has its place, and I keep a USB floppy around just for these situations.
I dug around the 'Net and found the Intel Matrix Storage Manager-7.5.0.1017 driver exe file. You can install that on a working XP box, then copy the drivers from the installation. Or - you can download them directly from here (yeah these are safe).
Here was the problem. The fr**k*ng BIOS on the a205 saw the USB floppy fine, but XP refused to see it. I hate Toshiba almost as much as HP. No matter what I tried - no floppy for me.
Ok - so let's slipstream the drivers into the XP CD and be done with it. Grab a copy of nLite and make sure you have a CD burning program and know how to deal with an ISO file.
You can use these instructions for nLite since it's late and I don't feel like typing them:
http://www.nogodforme.com/HPDV6500T.htm
*If you can't figure it out, just email me, and I will help you out.
Last, I booted to my shiny new XP CD and voila! It decided to play nicely. Now I just have to find all the drivers!
Drivers
Well this has been fun. Basically, there is zero support on the Toshiba USA support site. Fortunately, the Toshiba Europe site has the drivers listed. I picked a model and downloaded them and presto! After completely installing all the drivers and apps needed, I promptly made an image of the PC. The I burned a DVD of the image, XP SP2 slipstreamed .iso file, and the drivers.
Here is a screenshot of the driver listing (click for larger version):
References:
nLite
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
Downgrading a Toshiba Notebook to run WindowsXP
http://www.tempusfugit.ca/toshiba_xp.html
"No Drives Found" when downgrading to XP
http://www.tempusfugit.ca/no_drives.html
Toshiba EMEA - Wireless LAN Driver Portal
http://aps.toshiba-tro.de/wlan/?page=downloads
Update 8-18-08 *Has some additional driver links
Downgrading Windows Vista Home Basic to XP Pro on Toshiba A205-S5800
http://www.chaohan.com/node/122
Formatting a drive and installing XP is not a big, except on Toshiba laptops. Their driver support, even if the laptop was built during the XP time, is marginal at best. I've spent more hours digging around the 'Net looking for Toshiba drivers than I care to count.
Recently, a client of mine needed a laptop faster than I could get one from Dell. Against my better suggestion, he purchased 2 Toshiba a205-s5825 laptops, both with Vista. Naturally, he wanted to run XP on at least one of them and so the saga begins.
First, I formatted the drive. Ok - no big deal, but when I rebooted to an XP CD with SP2 slipstreamed in, it refused to see the HD. Hmmmm. I checked the drive in several partitioning utilities and sure enough it was there.
Next, I figured that XP just wasn't seeing the SATA drives. That's common, but the on many recent computers the BIOS will allow XP to see SATA. As most of you are aware, to install 3rd party SCSI or SATA drivers so XP will see a drive requires a floppy drive. Yes, the venerable floppy still has its place, and I keep a USB floppy around just for these situations.
I dug around the 'Net and found the Intel Matrix Storage Manager-7.5.0.1017 driver exe file. You can install that on a working XP box, then copy the drivers from the installation. Or - you can download them directly from here (yeah these are safe).
Here was the problem. The fr**k*ng BIOS on the a205 saw the USB floppy fine, but XP refused to see it. I hate Toshiba almost as much as HP. No matter what I tried - no floppy for me.
Ok - so let's slipstream the drivers into the XP CD and be done with it. Grab a copy of nLite and make sure you have a CD burning program and know how to deal with an ISO file.
You can use these instructions for nLite since it's late and I don't feel like typing them:
http://www.nogodforme.com/HPDV6500T.htm
*If you can't figure it out, just email me, and I will help you out.
Last, I booted to my shiny new XP CD and voila! It decided to play nicely. Now I just have to find all the drivers!
Drivers
Well this has been fun. Basically, there is zero support on the Toshiba USA support site. Fortunately, the Toshiba Europe site has the drivers listed. I picked a model and downloaded them and presto! After completely installing all the drivers and apps needed, I promptly made an image of the PC. The I burned a DVD of the image, XP SP2 slipstreamed .iso file, and the drivers.
Here is a screenshot of the driver listing (click for larger version):
References:
nLite
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
Downgrading a Toshiba Notebook to run WindowsXP
http://www.tempusfugit.ca/toshiba_xp.html
"No Drives Found" when downgrading to XP
http://www.tempusfugit.ca/no_drives.html
Toshiba EMEA - Wireless LAN Driver Portal
http://aps.toshiba-tro.de/wlan/?page=downloads
Update 8-18-08 *Has some additional driver links
Downgrading Windows Vista Home Basic to XP Pro on Toshiba A205-S5800
http://www.chaohan.com/node/122
posted by Rex Moncrief at
5/30/2008 12:10:00 AM
25 Comments:
Rex,
I bought the Satellite A205-S5825 and downgraded to XP Pro SP2. I have two problems: the sound stutters badly and the mouse jumps-not far but just enough to be annoying.
The sound is bad; you can't watch videos or use Media Player. I used the drivers on the UK site and also tried the Realtek site which has a later version and provides XP drivers. I've also installed the UAA bus driver that apparently is not included with XP because it was pre-HD sound. (Microsoft Hotfix KB888111).
Regarding the mouse, it doesn't seem to matter if the touchpad is installed or not. It jumps using an external mouse as well. The Alps driver from the UK site works okay. At least the scrolling works in both directions. A USB mouse works but jumps about an inch usually in the direction you are advancing. I'm getting used to it but I've never seen this behavior on any of my other machines.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jim White
Hi Jim,
I'm very sorry for posting a reply 2 months late! This one slipped through the cracks as my business has been very very busy this year.
What is happening with the sound - as in define "bad". Is it out of synch with the video or what?
The mouse issue sounds like it may be related to video drivers and not necessarily the touchpad.
First, id like to thank you for making blog post, it has helped alot.
Ive had this laptop for a few months now and was really hating it because of vista and Toshiba "hell-bent" ways on trying to force its consumers to stick to crapsta.
I just have one question, and its about the drivers. Ive install all my drivers and they all work except for one, the media card reader.
Can you point me in the direction of where to get an xp driver for it.
Thanks
Hi jamaal,
I'd suggest that you may have to try a couple of different models from the Toshiba Europe site to see if you can find the drivers that match your media reader.
http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/download_drivers_bios.jsp?service=UK
In the past, I've found that even on the same model number of a computer, there may be different hardware installed. I suppose it depends on what they have available on the day of production.
Thanks for the speedy reply, ironically enough the card reader started working right after I updated to sp2.
Anyhow, thanks again for writing this piece on downgrading Toshiba laptops in general.
O my, what a time I'm having! On my A205-S5825 I've got XP home sp2 installed just fine.
It's the drivers that are giving me fits! Going to download the latest Winzip and see if I can get those 3 chip files extracted, cuz my version 8 won't work.
I have been just clicking on the chipset icon and installing them that way. Is that a problem? Cuz they seem to install ok that way.
Now for the other drivers. I can get all of them installed except for the wireless LAN and the sound. I did it once for the sound but didn't write down the order in which I installed them. :-/
The wireless controller just won't happen at all.
Did you follow the instruction text for the order you used? or what order did you install them in?
Any suggestions will be MUCH appreciated!
roxe
Me again... checking again those 3 chipset files, they are exe files. When I dclick on them, they don't give me the option to choose what folder to extract them to... they just auto extract and start the install process.
Have they upgraded these to act like this, or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks!!
Hi roxe,
Are you referring to the Intel Storage Matrix drivers? If so, you can directly download them non-exe from here:
http://www.smartergeek.com/blog/IntelMatrixStorageManager-7.5.0.1017.zip
PS: I've been using the free Alzip utility for years - works great!
http://www.altools.com/Downloads/ALZip.aspx
Thanks so much, Rex!
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-025753.htm#a
The three files: graphics, chipset, and storage are on that page... these are the three files I'm talking about.
I also found another person who has done this to his laptop...
http://tinyurl.com/69h6m8
plus the original page (which doesn't give the entire urls like the tiny url above) of the Technology Muse. (the page is nowhere to be found now)
1) Did you use the display and chipset files from the Europe Toshiba page when you installed all the drivers?
2) Did you follow the install order as listed in the Installation Instructions text which is the first listed download?
Thanks again!
Well, just got through getting XP Pro on this machine. XP Home just wouldn't install the drivers.
All the drivers are installed and the only yellow in the devman is all the usb hubs, right at the end of the usb listing.
Any idea what I've done wrong??
Deleted the hubs; rebooted and they were reinstalled.
WOW!! No more yellow marks!!
Sure nice to have this done! So far, everything works just fine.
Glad you got it worked out. To address your earlier question, I was able to use the drivers from the European site. However, many times there are slight differences in the hardware that require different drivers.
It's good to link to as many sites and suggestions as possible.
As a side note, when doing pc's like this, it is a good idea to learn about imaging software such as Acronis so that you can create real "save" points as you go along.
Me too, Rex... glad it's all worked out. Got all 95+ updates (whew!) done today; plus most of the apps.
Need to finish 5 more apps; then will defrag and Ghost it.
THEN I can relax! :)
It was most interesting using nlite to delete things from the install I don't want or need... saved almost 200mb. That is some program! I was very comfortable using it, as it asks what one wants to keep and then doesn't allow those items in the listing for deletion. Very well thought out.
I really appreciate you posting your experience. It gave me the courage I needed :)
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
What drivers do you suggest using if I am downgrading Satellite a205 4777?
Hi Saud,
I haven't done an a205-4777 yet, or I would be glad to post information. For now, my best suggestion is Google. If you have lots of trouble, please post back and I will see what I can do.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Satellite+a205+4777+xp&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS236US237
I've been trying to "downgrade" a Toshiba 205-5879 from Vista home premium to Win XP Pro for about 3 weeks. XP just will not see the hard drive. I've flashed the bios to a version Toshiba indicates is for XP. I've done the F6 thing and had drivers from Intel on the diskette. Everything appears to work as it should except that when it's almost through it advises that no hard drive has been detected. Toshiba is no help and says to contact Intel and Intel says it must be a bios problem and that the OEM (Toshiba) writes their own bios and that I should contact them. It's just one big circle. Do you have any ideas?
Here is what I've had to do in cases like that. Yes, this will sound like throwing in the kitchen sink, but it works. I just had a similar situation today with a business client that wanted to clone their existing desktop to a brand new Dell that was pre-loaded with XP. Should have been a no-brainer right? Not quite - but I got it done and saved the client a lot of downtime re-installing software.
(1) Nuke the drive using a program like Darik's Boot and Nuke
http://www.dban.org
(2) If possible use a program like Part Magic or GParted (free/opensource) to create your partitions - make sure to set them to active. If not, let the XP installer have all the free space.
OR
(1) Download VirtualBox and create an XP VM using your XP installer CD.
(2) Create an image of the XP installation using something like Acronis True Image w/ Universal Restore (to reset the HAL).
(3) Get a SATA to USB connector and image the drive via USB - make sure primary partition is set to active!
(4) Plug into Toshiba, boot it up, and install XP drivers.
Note: If you can't get it, contact me and we can work something out using Fed-Ex or UPS.
Rex,
You lost me after Nukeing the drive and then the partition (gparted) software. I created a bootable cd of dban and another with the .iso version of gparted. I haven't done anything yet and am not until I understand the whole process. As I understand it, I am to wipe out the entire drive (Nuke) and then format and partition it with gparted. After that, what will make it recognizable to Win XP? Are you talking about using another computer to make an XP VM using VirtualBox?
John R
From email:
--------------
I bought an older Toshiba Satellite 1800/1805. The people I bought it from stated it needed an operating system. How do I get the computer to read CD. I have a reboot disk but don't know the steps to use it. What do I type in.
--------------
My Reply:
--------------
You will need to set the BIOS to boot to CD first. With many Toshiba's, you can press either F10 or F12 when the computer is booting up to give you a Boot Priority list. Select your CD drive.
I'm not sure what "reboot disk" you have, but I'll guess that it is the "restore" disk from Toshiba. Hopefully, the restore disk contains the entire OS (operating system), but in many cases those disks also require files on a hidden partition on your hard drive. Hopefully again, the previous owner did not delete that partition if present.
If the above is not the case, then you will need a CD or DVD with an operating system. That means you will need to purchase a Windows XP from somewhere:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116511
Or - you can download Ubuntu Linux, which is free and open source. It is not Windows, but if you are not dependent on Windows-based programs, then Linux is a great alternative.
www.ubuntu.com
Hope this information helps. If not, feel free to email me or call me.
Dear Sir
I just got the toshiba satellite a205-s5825 and would like to install windows xp on it,I have read your post but i am still facing difficulties slipstreaming since I don't have a USB floppy drive.Please could you inform me in detail how to proceed with this and also when I am done how to install the drivers for the laptop.Hoping to hear from you soon. Regards Didier A. Australia
Hi - you don't need the floppy to slipstream. Slipstreaming from a working machine puts the drivers in the XP installation CD. Go to the following link and look for this section:
Slipstreaming
"To slipstream Sata drivers into XP, first you have to create a folder on your hard drive, copy the entire XP cd to it. I've heard that nLite will error out if the length of the folder name is greater than 260 characters. So make your folder name near the root directory with a short name...."
OR
You can go review the instructions on the nLiteOS website:
Click Here
----------
Installing Drivers
----------
It is always best to look at the drivers in your device manager BEFORE you install a new operating system. That way you can verify by name the hardware that your machine has.
After you slipstream XP and install it, XP will prompt you with the found new hardware wizard several times. I generally skip them and get to the desktop. Then I go into device manager and begin installing the drivers one by one.
For this model, you will need to use the Toshiba Europe link and download the correct drivers.
Hi Rex, quite awhile since posting here. Got everything to work just great... even the IDE/ATA external drive thru the USB!!
However, am trying to get my external sata drive thru an esata expresscard to work. the bios doesn't even see the drive at all. it does see the ide drive. i updated the bios to ver 5.6 from the europe driver page you have posted above... and still doesn't see the drive.
funny thing... the 4 partitions on that sata drive DO show up in explorer/my computer... can read/write both ways.
so what is happening??
anything else i can try??
thanks!
roxe
Hi and welcome back!
You are trying to boot the pc to the eSATA ExpressCard drive?
Unless the BIOS supports booting through the ExpressCard card (rare), then it can't boot to that drive. The reason it can boot to the USB drive is that many BIOS's are now capable of USB booting. Of course Windows sees the ExpressCard (and thus eSATA) after booting through PnP.
Now, there are some mobo's and BIOS that do allow XP to see eSATA if the controller is part of the mobo and not a separate chipset. It depends on how the BIOS handles it.
Priceless information. Thank you so much. This was of great assistance. I would only like to mention that out of the intel files provided you only need one, the 8, 32 bit version for the toshiba A205-S5825 (or at least that was the only one I needed) when I tried using all of them my boot cd crashed.
Anyhow. I now have XP on my laptop, relatively painless. The hunt for drivers begins :)
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