A while back I found a very good deal on a Dell 531 slimline – part of its 530 budget series computers. Like $300 good. And they’re having it again. The systems in question, and indeed the one I bought were shipped with FreeDos. I figured I could just install my own copy of XP or 2000 on it. The comparable systems shipping with Windows Vista cost more, plus there was no way I was going to deal with the frustrations of Vista.
When I got the machine and went to Dell’s site to download the sound card, mobo and graphics drivers, I noticed that they weren’t there. All they had were Vista drivers. WTF? Seems in an effort to push Vista on the consumer, Microsoft has forced PC Makers not to support XP on their machines. So to find the XP Drivers for this machine I had to hunt around the internet. Thank goodness I found them:
- Graphics Driver: GeForce 6150 LE – nVidia ForceWare Release 162
- Sound Card Driver: Realtek Onboard R175 WDM Driver
- Motherboard Driver (incl Ethernet, USB, etc): nVidia nForce 430 chipset
I’m now happily running XP on a cheap Dell and will never have to deal with Vista.
UPDATE: There was one missing device driver that showed up in SysInfo and Device manager as ACPI\AWY0001\2&DABA3FF&0 – which is the AMD Away Mode – download these 2 files and use the Device Manager to update the drivers.
AMD Away Mode Drivers amdaway.cat
AMD Away Mode Drivers amdaway.inf
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If I understood properly though, Dell also has a deal where you can buy some of their cheaper computers with some form of Linux pre-installed on them. Were I to invest in a Dell, that’s probably what I’d spring for.
Comment by Phil — January 25, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
yes – the 530n and 531n come with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn installed.
Comment by webadmin — January 25, 2008 @ 6:06 pm