XP Drivers for VGN-FZ180e?

[Silvers24]

Plan on removing Vista & installing XP on my laptop in the next 2-3 days.
Anyone know a place to find most of my drivers for XP?
Or am I SOL & should not install XP?
I do have (burned) recovery disks for Vista incase it don't work.
But I wanna try it anyway.
Can't I make like a backup of C:/WINDOWS/DRIVERS folder? Which contains some, if not most of the drivers I need.

[juppy]

I'm not real sure what you mean. If you have an XP install disk, it should have all the drivers XP will need for the OS to run. Am I missing something here or are you talking about drivers for something else? If you mean the drivers for individual components and the like, you should be able to just get them from the manufacturer's website.

[Silvers24]

My Sony Laptop (Sony VAIO) came preinstalled with Vista, the problem is, is no Sony don't support the XP OS for this brand/model. So I am in need of knowing what to do as far as drivers to get the components to work correctly. (Wireless net, ethernet ports, etc etc etc etc) indeed the OS will install, but I will need everything else to work when XP is installed.

[juppy]

Well, I see what you're asking now.....unless I'm mistaken though, I think XP *should* have a generic driver that will work with most of your components. I haven't ever come across many things that it doesn't have one for. I mean, what I'm saying is that the components aren't anything that is totally dependent on Vista alone. They are likely the same technology that XP was running on in older machines. One exception would be if the video card is a DX10 card, but I'm not aware of any laptops that have that yet. They'd be really new if there are any. Maybe someone else knows different about Sony's stuff though and can lend an opinion on whether there's something that might not work.

[Silvers24]

Considering the GFX card is a dedicated GeForve 8400M GT I think it'd DX10.
Shouold be no problem for this, nvidia has drivers for the 8000 series.

[juppy]

Yep. After looking up your card, it IS a DX10 capable card. I didn't know they were putting them in laptops yet (learn something new every day, huh? :D ). Like you said though, nVidia should have the drivers for that, so I don't think there's anything else that would present a problem in going back to XP.

[Silvers24]

aleight then!
Time to get installing :D

[Silvers24]

Ok, I have run into some series problem.

I need help with getting my AUDIO installed!
:(
The Sound Card (For the laptop) is by Sigmatel.
I tried getting audio drivers for this from their site, but no where to be seen.
So I downloaded Realteks HD Audio installed it, and it still won't work because it's by Sigmatel :(
Everytime it does install I get a It installed but some devices attatched to it didn't or something. So what do I do??????

[juppy]

I take it you tried the audio driver for it that DOES work with Vista, and it DOESN'T work with XP? Just wondering, because sometimes they'll work with more than one operating system, even if they don't outrightly specify that in writing. Worth a shot if you haven't tried that one. The latest Vista driver is here.
ftp://download.sony.com/US/pc/STDAUD-01487701-US.EXE

If that doesn't work, I ran across a link that says it's *supposed* to be a Sigmatel audio driver for XP. It's here

ftp://ftp.vaio.sony.co.jp/pub/vaio/download/SP-011080-05/STDAUD-01108005-UN.exe

There were some install instructions on the same page with it.
1. Download STDAUD-01108005-UN.exe and save it to a download directory
2. Close all running programs
3. Open Control Panel (Click Start -> Control Panel)
4. Double-click Add or Remove Programs
5. Select SigmaTel Audio and click Remove
6. Click OK to complete remove the selected application
7. Click Finish and restart your computer
8. The Found New Hardware Wizard appears when Windows has completed rebooted
9. Click Cancel to close the Wizard
10. Go to the download directory and double-click STDAUD-01108005-UN.exe
11. Click Next and wait while the Wizard installs the new software
12. Click Finish when the installation is complete.

Not having that same hardware as you, I can't really say whether that XP driver will work or not, but again, doesn't hurt to try it.

Hope one of these works for ya. :)

[Silvers24]

I will try it in the next hour, thank yo uso much for the help. I will report back if it works.
I have been successful with everything since going to XP but the audio. So here is hoping. :)

[Silvers24]

HAHAHA ****!
I didn' try the one that does work for VIsta first, so instead I tried the second one.
WORKS LIKE A BLOODY CHARM!!!!!!!!!!
I'd hug ya if I could, but I aint gonna go that far :p
thank you so much juppy.

[Silvers24]

Well, I decided to reinstal XP on my laptop, because I used nLite to add more drivers to my XP install disk, well...now I am trying to reinstall the audio using the second link you sent, however I am now getting errors.

Device object not present, please restart and try again.
What do I do!?
God, this is one time I regret messing with my install when I had it working just fine.

[Silvers24]

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b58/universal_/HELP.jpg

[Alaron]

Two things. First, please post links instead of inline images. Second, please use the Edit button to add to a post. Thank you.

__Moderator__

[juppy]

Have you gone to the Windows Update site yet to update the OS? That'd be my first move to solve the problem, because from what I found after some Googling was that you might not have the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) driver installed. Specifically, the info I found referenced KB888111 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888111) and KB835221 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835221). Those articles just tell what the drivers do though....they don't give you a download location. That's why I'd go to the Window's Update site first.....if you're missing them, they should show up in the update list as a missing audio driver. The update site is here, in case you don't happen to have the address handy.
http://www.update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx

If you download those updates, reboot, then try installing the audio driver again and see if it works this time, and we'll go from there.

[Silvers24]

EDIT: Alright I got it. Took me some time, had to extract the audio & install it manually.

[juppy]

Cool. Glad you got it working, because other than the stuff I mentioned above, I was running out of ideas! :D Congrats on getting it going though! :)

[TTBAiowa]

Please
can anyone please confirm installing windows xp on sony vgn-fz180 successfully?

[gallo81]

HAHAHA ****!
I didn' try the one that does work for VIsta first, so instead I tried the second one.
WORKS LIKE A BLOODY CHARM!!!!!!!!!!
I'd hug ya if I could, but I aint gonna go that far :p
thank you so much juppy.

Hey Silver, one question, did you have to put some driver for the sata hard drive for the windows xp installation recognize it? or it recognize the HDD without any problem?

Can you tell me which drivers did you add to the nlite disc you create?

Thank you a lot.

Gallo

[Silvers24]

I belive I had to add the Sata Drivers which was located in the Windows Vista OS before you go and delete the OS.
I added all the drivers I had found in Vista to the XP disc, and all of them worked (Well but maybe one or two)
It was all a pain.

Anyway, I now have installed a retail copy of vista on here, and it works great.
With Sp1, so it's not crappy like before!