need win-xp drivers for aspire 3050

i bought the acer aspire 3050 (sempron 1.8) almost a week ago, and it came pre-instlalled with vista home basic, and since the main reason for buying the machine is for music production; i need to install windows xp as most of the software i use (as well as the sound card) is not supported with vista.

i have read numerous posts on other websites where users with the same machine and same issue claimed that the drivers offered on the acer site as well as other sites like driverscollectionDOTcom have either old and not updated drivers, or are simply missing certain ones.

i was directed to this site:
http://www.user-guides.co.uk/asp/pr...e,Recovery,CD&recor=1&SearchFor=any&PT_ID=100
whereas the entire collection of windows-xp drivers can be purchased.

this is a problem for me since i do not have a credit card

is there any place i can get the updated win-xp driver colection/kit or the disc recovery mentoned above for the acer aspire 3050 for free?

thanx!

edit: forgot to mention that i also contacted acer tech support and they refused to help mw because win xp is not the os that came with the machine

 

Use the drivers found on the acer euro FTP located here you will find all the XP drivers for the components in your 3050 there.

The only drivers for XP that aren't up-to-date (that I can immediately see) from acer are the graphics driver, touchpad driver and soundcard driver.

However you can either update these manually yourself by going to ATI for the graphics, synaptics for the touchpad and realtek for the soundcard driver or you can use the ones provided by acer as they still work just as good.

 

thanx for the help Evolution.

my only concern (and correct me if im wrong here) is that the link you provide has maybe a dozen or so drivers whereas the link i provided (the win-xp driver cd for sale) has about 60 drivers.

am i risking a situation where during the install process i need a driver that i dont have and therefore end up with a machine with no os at all?

or have you done this personally with your machine?
if you are speaking from experience (as in you did the same thing i am trying to do: migrate from vista to xp) then that is enough proof for me

 

My 5102 actually came with XP MCE and I upgraded to vista ultimate so trust me the drivers that you find on acer's FTP are all the drivers that you will need for the components in your 3050.

You of course will have to get XP yourself as acer doesn't provide that but once you have XP loaded on install the drivers found on the link. You will also notice that drivers are there for vista as well under the vista folder on that FTP, so don't worry if you only saw a few drivers as the ones you probably looked at were just for XP alone.

XP will install whether you have the drivers on hand or not, it will not freeze during install. The worst that can happen is that once you have XP up and running you might forget to install a driver and it will show up as an unknown device within windows. If that happens then just install the needed driver and restart. The best thing about you installing your own OS is that you get away from having to remove the useless acer utilities like the empowering suite of programs which are nonsense. The only acer utility that you really need is acer's launch manager program and that is it.

I also took a look at the link you provided and alot of the "drivers" listed there are built into windows or will be taken care of when you install the chipset driver for instance there is no need for an CDrom driver etc and while I am looking here what on earth is a detonator driver this site is making things up now ! Also you have an ATI chipset and graphics card so there is no reason for them to be showing a nvidia driver...anyway

Hope this info helps you...

 

thanx bro, i think ill try it out

(maybe i should install xp on top of vista for a dual boot?)

 

one concern i have before i take the plunge;

i got this from a dual boot guide:
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about88231.html


"In particular, if you are using an SATA drive, make sure that you have Windows XP SATA Controller drivers available as they may be necessary for Windows XP setup to be able to "see" the partition on which you intend to install it. This is an important step"


and i dont see that driver (and i do have a sata drive int he laptop)

 

Ah you will have an issue with that, I see what you mean acer does not provide you with sata drivers. Somehow I thought your 3050 came with a pATA drive . Well if you have a sata drive then you will have to locate the driver before you go any further or windows XP will stop before installation and complain that it cannot recognize the hard disk/partition.

You should look around and see if you can find the sata driver for the 3050 somewhere as I unfortunately can't help you with this.

Before you wipe vista did you check to make sure that the software and that sound card don't have any updates that would allow them to work with vista? Check with the manufacturers and see.