Windows XP on M17x

Hello,

I've come across some threads mentioning people runing Win XP on a M17x. If someone has managed to get everything working right in XP, please let me know which sound card driver did you use. I've tried dozens of IDT 92HD73C1 drivers for XP and can't get it to start. Either the driver package reports the drivers aren't for my card(I've tried lots of Dell issued drivers specifically for the 92HD73C1 for WinXP) or everything installs just fine and the device cannot start afterwards.
Has anyone had any success getting the sound card to work under Windows XP(32 or 64bit)?

 

There was once a time where this made sence....but since windows 7, it hasn't. i cant think of a reason why i would want to run a box on XP. With compatibility modes or virtualization available, i cant imagine a good arguement for it.

 

Sorry I should have explained it further. My goal isto have a little fun experiencing and operating system that boot entirely from RAM. I've found a forum describing how this is achievable @ reboot.pro. The catch is I only have 4GB of RAM so trying to squeeze an entire Win 7 install on a 4gig RAMdisk is out of the question. Windows XP can be easily trimmed down to a few hundred MBs. But there isn't much point in trying to pull this through if sound doesn't work. So any info on working M17x sound drivers on XP would be appreciated.

 

I had 4gb of ram on my old M17x with windows 7 and it worked fine...

 

It seems I wasn't clear enough. I want to install Win XP on a RAMdisk which is disk emulated space reserved in RAM. The fun of this is that when you boot your entire Windows install from RAM every file that is needed to execute is already in your RAM on the virtual drive which makes finding and accessing it very very fast. No SSD out there can be compared to RAM speeds and access times so this makes it the fastest OS on any computer. But if you wan't an entire Windows boot from RAM you have to put everything that is usually on a hard drive into RAM. Windows 7 installs way over 4GB but a XP install is approx. 0.5GB. So putting an XP install on a virtual drive in RAM is possible even with installing additional programs. So can anyone please provide some info if they managed to get their IDT sound card to work in XP.

 

ok what you really want to do is use PE 3.0 and expand on the default programs..... PE 3.0 is Win7 and its only about 125mb before you start adding to it. the windows Automated installation tool kit (WAIK) is where you want to start. it is a free 1.6gb download.....it has what you need.

Edit: With this you can create a PXE BOOT image or modify it for boot with Thumbdrive, Ram Drive, DVD, whatever floats your boat.

 

Sure PE is one solution but it's possible to boot a regular Windows install from RAM which I would prefer over the PE environment which I guess is has some limited functionality. The obvious downside being that you can't install any software it has to pre-embedded in the PE image. Making a regular Windows install hard drive image and re-saving the image everytime a new program is installed gives one the possibility to normally install and uninstall software.

 

BTW I have managed to make the IDT sound card to partially work under XP. I've found some ECS mainboard IDT audio driver which makes it operational but I guess as a consequence of it being a motherboard driver I can't get the speakers to work. The output works just fine on the other hand. Better than nothing I guess.

 

Hello! I have just found this post from hours of searching online for solution that is similar to this. I have recently reformatted my Alienware M17x to Microsoft Windows XP, and I am too looking for that same driver. You mentioned that you have found one that is operational, can you please tell me where you got it, it would help me out a lot.