ASUS N56VM Dualbooting 7/XP

Hello guys,

I have been considering a dualboot option for my laptop (currently win7) and adding XP to my second partition.
However ASUS does not provide XP drivers. So i wanted to know if its still possible to make the win7 drivers compatible with Windows XP.


Regards.

 

Although they don't have a database available for you, you should be able to get the majority of drivers working through Windows update and mirror sites. But you may run into one or more that will give you problems. You can try contacting Asus tech support to see if they have archived drivers for XP.

 

I emailed them. However I dont think that windows update will be able to automaticly install the drivers since I really dont think a OS from 2002 will be able to automaticly use hardware from 2012.

 

Depends on the WHQL. Remember too that SP3 for XP was released in 2008, and there have still been updates to the OS.

Thankfully, support for XP SP3 was extended as well until 2014.

Microsoft Ends Support of Windows XP, Office 2003 in 2014!

 

ASUS just emailed me. They said they have no drivers available nor will they make any in the future so if Windows doesn't detect the drivers by itself the dualboot will fail.

 

You game for a little trial and error, then? If you find that there are no legacy or archived drivers available anywhere, and Windows doesn't have all the necessary ones, then you can always revert back (format the partition and use disk management to get your space back)

 

Uh is it possible to delete windows without formatting as there are lots of files there.

EDIT I just found a link to a site claiming they have drivers for XP avaiable. Wonder of these drivers actually work!

 

Looks good to me!: driverstag.com | WOT Reputation Scorecard | WOT (Web of Trust)

Just because Asus does not supply them anymore, doesn't mean someone else out there did away with them. Asus probably just wanted to make room on their server for more up to date material.

 

Ok then, but could you answer my first question aswell (Is it possible to install/delete windows without formatting that partition?)?

 

Nope. You can delete individual files/folders, but there's no way to get rid of the operating system without a format. And you need to throw caution to the wind if you decide to delete system files/folders.

 

Hmm. How about this: I take some disk space away from a existing partition and create a seperate partition with that disk space (Resulting 3 partitions) and install the OS on that partition? Or is it not possible to take disk space away from already created partitions?

 

You can resize a partition and create a new partition within Disk Management, or during OS install. Linux installs give a really simple interface for doing this. Just bear in mind how much space you're using in your current partition, so that you don't take so much space away that it becomes unusable, because you may not be able to extend it later.

 

Ok then, I'm sure 5 gb or something lower should be enough for a winows xp install? I will install the programs that will be used on xp simply on the other partition (creating a seperate map).

 

It's always a good idea to exceed the "Recommended Requirements" on anything, so 5GB should be a fair amount of space:

System requirements for Windows XP operating systems

 

Ok thanks for all the help then.