Complete XP Guide for P-6831FX

News: I would also like to direct you to th3t1nm4n's guide to installing XP on P-series laptops, which a lot of users -- including myself -- find clearer and easier to follow.

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My guide:

Credits go to bwhxeon for most drivers and the hints to installing XP that ultimately helped me write this guide.

Disclaimer: Following these procedures, I was able to get XP working with sound, 8800GTS, wireless and bluetooth, but I can't guarantee 100% it's going to go exactly the same for you. YMMV.

1) Burn the restore partition onto a DVD

Code:

Required:
- 1 Fresh, factory-setting P-6831FX
- 1 DVD

To-do:
1) Put DVD into DVD drive
2) Open "Start > All Programs > Gateway Recovery Center > Gateway Recovery
   Center"
3) Click "Create Application and Driver recovery disc"
4) Click your way through and choose to "burn it on disc" instead of ISO image
5) Choose DVD instead of CD, then it'll check how many it needs and tells you 1
6) Create the recovery disc

2) Preparing and installing XP from disc

Code:

Required:
- 1 Windows XP (w/ Service Pack 2) install disc
- 1 Valid XP license key
- 1 CD
- [url=http://home.midmaine.com/~nlite/nlite/nLite-1.4.1.installer.exe]NLite Installer[/url]
[size='1']- DriverPack Base and DriverPack MassStorage[/SIZE]
- [B]Edit: Site's Author did not want people to just leech, so visit [url=http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/]his website[/url],
  click through it and download the [U]Driver Base[/U] and [U]Driver MassStorage[/U][/B]

To-do:
1)  Download and install NLite
2)  Insert Windows XP disc into DVD drive
3)  Open NLite, click your way through and set the "Windows installation"
    location to the DVD drive that has the Windows XP disc, then choose
    a directory to store the decompressed ISO folder. Hit Next and
    generate the decompressed ISO folder.
4)  Run and extract DPs_BASE_7052.exe (DriverPack Base), and then put
    DP_MassStorage_wnt5_x86-32_801.7z (DriverPack MassStorage) into
    the "< directory >/DriverPacks" folder.
5)  Run DPs_BASE.exe
6)  Click "Next > Next" then browse for location of decompressed ISO folder.
    Click next.
7)  Check "DriverPack MassStorage 8.01" and then click "Slipstream!"
8)  After slipstream's done, open NLite again
9)  This time, locate the decompressed ISO folder as Windows Installation
10) Click your way through then click on "(Create) Bootable ISO"
11) Click "Make ISO" and select a directory.
12) After the ISO is made, take out Windows XP disc and put in CD
13) Burn the ISO image onto CD
14) Once that's done, restart computer
15) While in boot screen, hit F10 for BOOT Menu
16) Choose to boot from CD/DVD drive (should be highlited by default)
17) Hit any key when it says "Hit any key to boot from CD Drive..."
18) It'll now show up with the blue XP installation screen, let it load.
19) Then, make a partition for XP. Personally, I deleted both of the old ones
    and made a partition that uses the whole HDD.
20) Let it set up Windows, and when prompted, insert valid license key and
    other information.

3) Installing XP Drivers

Code:

Required:
- [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z457.exe]7-zip[/url] or [url=http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar371.exe]WinRar[/url]
- [url=http://www.megaupload.com/?d=660T2H7C]Newest Drivers Pack[/url]

To-do:
1)    Download either 7-zip or Winrar and install it
2)    Download the drivers pack and extract it
3)    Run setup.exe (or setup64.exe for 64-bit) for the chipset in folder
      "1) Chipset" <- reboot after
4)    Run setup.exe for ethernet in folder "2) Ethernet Card"
5)    Run setup.exe (or setup64.exe for 64-bit) for wireless in folder
      "3) Wireless"
6)    Run setup.exe in "4) Bluetooth" <- this is Broadcom Bluetooth software, I
      don't know how to get XP's default bluetooth to work
7)    Run setup.exe in "5) .net Framework 3.5 (Internet Required)" <- as stated,
      you need internet
8)    Run setup.exe in "6) KB888111 HD Audio Hotfix" <- reboot after
9)    After installing the hotfix, Windows finds 2 new hardware:
9.1)  "Modem Device on High Def Audio Bus" <- unknown driver yet, just let
      it fail searching for now
9.2)  "Audio Device on High Def Audio Bus" <- point search to "7) Sound Driver"
      and it'll find the driver and install <- reboot after
10)    Run _setup.exe (underscore is put there for the sake of having it come
      first when sort by name) in "8) Video Driver"
11)   While installing the video driver, Windows finds 1 new hardware:
11.1) "Plug and Play Monitor" <- just choose install automatically, then it'll
      finish installing the monitor and video drivers
12)   Reboot and XP installation is now complete.

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Driver Pack History
Apr 12 '08 - Changed driver to XFastest 174.74 (thanks josmol!)
Mar 02 '08 - Reuploaded last pack with newer Video Driver (174.16)
Feb 22 '08 - Added Ethernet Card driver (thanks crasher6!), Video Driver (174.12) Reported to be broken
Feb 10 '08 - Initial Package (Chipset, Wireless, Bluetooth, .net Framework, Audio HotFix, Sound Driver, Video Driver (169.61)

 

After a few hours of testing, I've come to the conclusion that Broadcom Bluetooth stack is not as responsive as XP's default stack, probably because Broadcom's has to go through the software and then back to XP itself.

If anyone manage to get XP Bluetooth working, please post up a how-to. Thanks!

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To remove "My Bluetooth Places" from desktop:

1) Open Registry Editor ("Windows Key + R" or Run "regedit.exe")
2) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace
3) Expand NameSpace and look for a key named {6af09ec9-b429-11d4-a1fb-0090960218cb}. Verify the key’s default value is My Bluetooth Places, and then delete it. Note: You may want to backup this key before deleting it.
4) Refresh the desktop (Click on the desktop, Press F5).

Credits go to translocator.ws for the tip!

 

Thanks very much for the clear guidance. Other than the bluetooth, is there any functionality that may be missing if we downgrade to XP? How slow is the broadcom? Important utility functionality missing or features of the notebook not working? Can you add any of that to the guide? My P-6831FX is still sitting unopened waiting for some of that feedback. If it's not playing well, I'll sell or trade it for a 15.4" that does XP well.

 

Well, my MX1000 BT mouse with an external BT dongle and XP's BT stack works with zero-delay after idling with my old computer.

Currently, there is up to around 1 second delay with the mouse, Broadcom and P-6831FX.

But that's only when it comes out of idling -- normal usage is lag-free.

As for missing functionalities, I'm not too sure about HDMI, 4-in-1 card reader, firewire and ESata.

I'm almost positive ethernet doesn't work yet.

What works is video card, sound card, touchpad, orange buttons at the top, bluetooth and wireless.

(If I'm missing something, name it and I'll try to tell you if it's working or not)

 

I just noticed that VGA out is not working right now.

--- Edit ---

Nevermind, it does work. Just make sure you have "Extend my desktop onto this monitor" checked in display options.

 

Also, I tried your driver crasher6, it does not work.

If you got it to work, can you provide us with the procedure you used?

 

I downloaded 2 drivers for ethernet.I had it working but have vista back on there again.So not sure which 1 it was.If want to try it , here a link to the other driver I had.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

 

I am curious about performance in XP. Can someone run some tests? I have a old XP disk staring up at me.

 

Has anyone else noticed the sound issue with the right speaker? Being low to almost no existent in XP but working fine in Vista?

I posted this in bwhxeon's thread hoping he may have had some insight into this prior to changing to a different laptop but I didn't receive an answer from him or anyone else regarding this matter.

 

crasher6, you're right, the second driver is the right one. Thank you! With this driver and the Bluetooth driver needing to be added, looks like I'll be updating the driver pack soon...

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Lewdvig, what kind of tests are you thinking of?

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Derfman, I just tested the speakers by playing a song, and then changing the Balance in volume control.

You're partly right; the right speaker seems to be a bit softer whereas the left speaker sounds crispier.

However, my right speaker is nowhere near almost non-existent... In fact, I would've never noticed the imbalance if you didn't mention such issue.

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Also, I'm in the process of trying to find the actual driver for Bluetooth. The hardware is BCM92045NMD, a refurbished bluetooth adapter by Broadcom.

So that's how they keep costs low, by using refurbished parts.

 

That's illegal to be selling a product new w/refurbished parts.

.

 

Yikes... Well I'm not usually sensitive to such things nor does it bother me too much, but with Vista 64bit installed I notice that the right speaker is definitely much more present than in XP, but it does workly in XP just not as good as in Vista... I wish there was a way to pinpoint the problem and correct it but it's probably somewhere in the XP drivers...

Well I appreciate your confirmation of the problem, it makes me feel better knowing that it is not just my system that has the issue when using XP.

 

Hello,

Very nice and detailed instructions!!

If i choose to do a dual boot by installing Xp on a different partition. I only need to d/l the updated drivers pack?

Do i have room to install another HDD in this laptop?

Thx

 

I have never tried dual-booting before, but I assume you would need drivers on both partitions.

And yes, this laptop has a second SATA slot for HDD.

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a driver install for the Bluetooth.

When you install WIDCOMM BT stack, it installs the driver with it (since the BT hardware is from Broadcom).

 

Thanks for the updated driver pack, it really helped me out.

The driverpacks links don't seem to work, though. I just did a clean install of XP and only used the "updated drivers pack" link after getting everything I could find, and I'm still missing a few drivers. I'm missing the modem driver (not really a big deal, but would be nice for completion's sake) and I've got also got three "unknown devices."

These three devices all have hardware id PNP0C32, which I found from Google is for ACPI. However, I cannot find any links to any drivers for this. I also tried driveragent.com, and it had nothing.

 

beigemore -- thanks for the heads up on the driverpacks; the author changed the links because people were leeching too much. Also, I know that there are missing drivers, but for now, I have been just fine without the devices that require those drivers, so I haven't really looked into it... If you ever find out what those devices are, or actually found those drivers, do post it up; I'll add it to th drivers pack.

Driver pack updated.

 

I think the 3 unknown devices are for hot start utility.Only driver that I can find is the one that comes with the laptop for vista.

 

Do you know if it's possible to get audio out to work with HDMI in XP? I was nice having that in Vista, but I'm thinking it's not going to be possible in XP due to drivers.

 

I've tried and can't get the hdmi audio out working in xp.Looks like it will only work with vista drivers.

 

The mic input on the bezel doesn't seem work, either.

 

The updated driver pack is 0 bytes on megaupload:

May I suggest a service offered by a startup called Drop.io 100MB limit per drop, no need to password protect it but you can create and even allow others to add to the folder Its also 100 million times less annoying than megaupload. Just my 2cents.
Link to original driver pack once its done uplaoding from my computer will be:
http://drop.io/p6831fx210
Good for 1 yr from 3/1/08

Note: I have yet to try this but do have my hard disk partioned. Need to figure out how to install XP after vista and still be able to boot into vista. Thinking GRUB or something similar but not sure. Thanks all for your work here it really is greatly apreciated.

 

3 things I don't like about what you described:
- Good for 1 yr, whereas megaupload stays (I believe)
- Others can add to the folder, since this driver pack contains .exes to install drivers, people can potentially slip a malicious .exe or two into the drop.io file and give people a hard time.
- 100mb limit, with the Feb 22 zip file being 70mb initially, it is likely that the driver pack can go over 100mb later on.

I also tried loading it myself, the website loads pretty slowly.

Anyways, a new driver pack is uploaded.

 

The mic input jack works, the mic that's built into the laptop probably goes with the 1.3 megapixel USB webcam that is built into the display.

The media-card-reader works fine for me and the webcam shows up in Control Panel and lets me view it live.
The only thing I'm missing that I'd actually like to have is working multimedia keys.

 

Well, Play/Pause, Stop, RW, FF and mute buttons do work when you have a media player as your active window. But yea I'd also want full-compatibility, but it's hard since there's way to find a driver for this device from other companies, so we'd have to get Gateway to release one.

 

The right speaker being quiet issue is really bothering me. I've tried a few drivers I found for the series IDT/Sigmatel on our machines and none of them seem to work properly. Has anyone figured this out yet? I might have to put Vista back on.

 

Well, in Vista it doesn't even require a driver, just some registry adjustments that tell ehshell.exe what to do for each button...I've read of people compiling ehshell.exe from Windows Media Center Edition 2005 to work on XP Pro to solve their Vista-downgrade multimedia key problems for different laptops but I don't have MCE.

@MelchioR, open the IDT panel and balance the speakers so the right one is louder.

Modem driver from gateway works fine for it btw.

 

Yeah, I did that...but no matter the balance the right speaker is just too darn soft. It does make it a bit better, however. Also...if I ever need audio via HDMI I'm pretty much f'd. Has anyone tried the mini optical SPDIF?

 

HDMI is evil/DRM. I wish this had a S/PDIF for a good way of having digital audio output, but I'm pretty sure mine doesn't at least. Are you thinking of the FireWire port?

I've been doing digital audio to my stereo over the network.

 

Gateway website posted some drivers for WINXP for network , bluetooth and others for Gateway P-6831FX , no ideea if you guys know so i just posted , sry if already known .

 

I can confirm that their WiFi, Bluetooth, and Modem drivers all work in XP.

 

That's why I specified the mic input on the bezel. I just wish there were a way to get sound to go through HDMI and not just video.

 

When you plug headphones into the headphone jack, right before you plug it in all the way do you notice a red light coming out of it? It's called mini-toslink or something like that...I saw it coming out of my FX =)

 

Still no real comments on whether or not XP is worth it on the P-6831FX, performance-wise that is. The only comment I've seen was from bwhxeon who mentioned he didn't see a huge improvement performance increase. Of course there is the issue that some games don't run under Vista well (like Dungeon Siege) that WOULD be fixed but performance-wise is anyone seeing a difference of any kind?

 

Certain games ie gears of war and unreal engine games run a ton better for me under xp as does crysis in dx9 . games like cod4 and lost planet run better and faster in vista so im just using dual boot . if your trying to get the absolute best framerates out of your games then i would suggest a dual boot.

 

Yup - agreed. Dual boot is the best way to go. Being mobile now I am gonna start the dual boot setup here tomorrow. Should be able to get it done while I'm here.

 

Well once again I couldn't get the video drivers to install. I have the latest XP driver pack from this thread and the video driver did the same as most of the Vista ones, didn't install. Now I am not connected to the Internet at the present time, I'm doing this from work and I cannot get on from here. So 'technically' I didn't follow the directions to a 'T'. Hopefully things will work better at home once I get outta here.

 

did you put the modded inf file in the folder where the drivers get extracted to cause thats the only way the drivers are going to work.

 

Well, no, only because I'm assuming that Hahutzy already put the modded config file in the folder.

I actually downloaded and used the modded config for 169.61 and they installed fine. I'm hoping to get rid of more of the yellow explanation points when I get home and jack into the internet.

 

I am, Vista is much slower at starting up and loading programs. Game load times seem to take longer, and don't forget that Vista takes up a lot more HDD space than XP.

You're basically asking "Does Windows XP preform better than Vista on new hardware?" and of course the answer is that XP has lower system requirements. I'm only using DX10 in XP to run Halo 2 ( http://halo2xp.tk/ ) thanks to the Alky Project ( http://fallingleafsystems.com/ ), other than DX10 games I'd say XP runs games way better.

 

I finally bit the bullet and did this install. All is working now except for 2 unknown devices.

All functionality seems to be here, Have not tried Sound out thru HDMI

ESata works, SD reader works, Webcam works Wierless and all drivers work.

I would like to add a couple of notes though, the video drivers that were included with the latest driverpack would not install, they seem to have the proper modded INF but I was not able to get them to work. I had to use the video driver from this pack here

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MQ4DUJX3

Also, Since the Modem and Touchpad drivers are not included in the package I made a self extracting EXE containing them both and uploaded it here
http://drop.io/FX_XP_MODEM


If you don't trust my upload you can download them individually here
Touchpad : http://www.synaptics.com/support/index.cfm
and here
Modem: http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=21732&dscr=Modem%20Driver%20version:%202.1.84&uid=190852819

 

So, in the end, What exactly are we losing at this point by going to xp?

IE. what are the two devices?

Do the shortcut media keys up top of the keypad work?

 

Is everyone still having problems with the right speaker being lower than the left?

 

The devices are the media keys according to what everyone has been saying and it makes sense, but the media keys do work. The media keys will control music in Windows Media Play fine, but they do not work as application launchers because Windows XP (non-media center) isn't capable of that and doesn't have the Vista Hot Start utility from eshell.exe

In Windows XP you will loose the application launch from those media keys, your right speaker may sound a lighter (I don't have this problem), the mic that's built into the laptop probably won't work (doesn't for me), HDMI out probably won't work (I haven't tried it, I don't use HDMI), and if you use Bluetooth you'll have to deal with using an ugly interface that comes with the drivers (I'm pretty sure nobody has gotten it to work with XP's bluetooth manager).

 

HDMI does work with XP, but it doesn't send sound, only video.

Has anyone found out any better sound drivers yet? I can't get over how bad the speakers sound, as well as the right being a LOT(not a little bit) lower than the left.

 

Is this only when using the onboard speakers or does it affect audio line out as well?

 

I can't really say for the audio line out, because i haven't used that, but I get this weird feeling when I'm listening on headphones that there's something different. I can't put my finger on it, but it sounds like the music is a little distorted; then again, it might be my imagination.

I would assume that using external speakers should be fine.

 

I was wondering if anyone has figured out where to find the drivers for the Microsoft ACPI-compliant Controller drivers. I have 3 unknown devices with the same name left w/o any drivers. Hope someone can tell me if it's necssary or not. XP seems to run fine w/o them though.

 

@iclucku:
Read on the previous page, they're for the HotStart keys and aren't compatible with XP. You don't need them.

 

I followed the instructions exactly, except the only legit copy of WinXP is the first edition "Upgrade" that was installed on my old desktop. I created the disc fine with nLite, burned with nLite @ 16x. Booted up, it went through all of the temp file transfers to do the installation. When it is about to go to the first screen for installation (it's been awhile, but I think it's the agreement page) I get a BSOD relating to some .sys file (computer's at home and I'm at work). Anyone else have this type of problem?