Complete XP Guide for P-6831FX

I HATE VISTA!!

i really tried to like it, to look past all the "issues" but no, i dont even care, XP ALL THE WAY! I will be attempting this tonight...wish me luck

 

Make sure to only use the Video Driver 169.41 from the old pack. I tried both 174.xx series and the one from the new pack and was left with a half installed driver that was pretty hard to remove.

Glad to see more people trying XP. Down with VISTA!

 

yay its done! worked any everything is running the same (driver wise) and its much MUCH faster and not as anoying! woooot!

 

OMG! Now you got to redo all those game benchmarks!!??

I'm real close doing this as well..

 

O RIGHTO! im going to do that! totally forgot.....ill add call of duty 4 as well....borrowing it from a friend

 

As to the video drivers in XP i used the combined file laptopvideo2go.com had a week or so ago, Xfastest 174.74. Downloaded this, ran set up and presto, just like a desktop install of video drivers. Couldn't have been simpler.

I'll try and find the link.

EDIT:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18047
this is what i used - both on the XP partition and Vista.

 

The xfastest drivers seem to be real easy to install, just run setup, I am useing the 174.74 vista 32bit, works great.

 

Anyone else running XP64 on this thing?

 

we neeed vista and xp benchmarks already!!

 

Happened to me a few times when I nLited too many things out I believe. You can either copy down whatever .sys you're missing down, recreate the nLite with same setting but put the .sys in the "files to keep" window.

Or you can re-nLited and cut less out.

 

I second this! Also, are you guys re-formatting with XP as your only OS, or creating partitions? I'd prefer to only have one OS.

 

I only have XP.

 

Did you by chance perform any benchmarks before upgrading (or downgrading, depending on how you look at it )? I'd be interested to know the difference in performance for gaming between a system with XP vs. Vista...

 

Sorry to keep posting here, but I just installed XP and have some questions:

- Is there any hope of getting the mic to work?
- Does everyone have the problem of lower volume from the right speaker? If not (as I remember reading), how did some people get lucky?
- What is the "mass storage controller" that has no driver? Is there a fix for this?

I am just wondering if these issues have any hope of being resolved.

Thanks!

 

some people are stating that the left speaker sound crispier than the right so i guess thats normal.

mass storage controller refers to your hard disk.or if you got something plugged in on usb try pulling that out to see if it works.

 

I do not have the mass storage controller problem, a Windows Update got rid of it and installed the Intel drivers for it.

I am downloading 3DMark®Basic Edition (Build 1.1.0) to do a benchmark in XP.

 

i was referring to LOLLAVID

 

I know, I just told him/her how to get rid of that issue.

The 3DMark Basic Edition benchmark in XP was "7063 3DMarks" on the laptop stock in Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit. I don't use Vista and am not going to re-install it to compare, so if your P-6831FX is still stock and you have the stock Vista Home installed, please download 3Dmark 2006 Basic Edition (Free), run it, and post your 3DMarks score for comparison.

 

Does anyone have any information on the SPDIF port? like what is the port connection called, i heard something like mini-toshlink but want to try to make sure. also are we sure there is spdif? i tried asking gateway and they were completly usless in asking about spdif. I think if it does exist its in the headphone port as it apears there is a circular object in the back of it.

what kind of audio does hte spdif output? is it still just 2.1? i have hopes of replacing my xbox media center with this laptop and need 5.1 or higher out of it to be worth it.

how do we get more info on the sound chip in this lappy?

Thanks for any help
War

 

So the microphone is a lost cause, huh? It would have been cool because I skype w/webcam overseas...

 

The sound card is a: SigmaTel 92HD71B Dual SPDF
http://www.idt.com/?catID=18442401

I haven't heard of anyone getting the built-in mic to work in XP, but the headphone jack works fine. I would recommend using it over the built-in one for better audio quality anyways. The webcam works fine in XP.

 

What nvidia Driver are you using, because it seems like Xp isnt that much better after all over Vista? Stock 3dmark for vista on my p-6831 has been around 7400's on the 167.47 drivers were u are gettin low 7000's with xp

 

174.74
The 3DMark score doesn't stand for much as far as gaming performance though. When I have some free time I'll do some Crysis benchmarking.

 

O.K. Here's the error that I'm getting. Does anyone have a clue how to fix this? What exactly am I doing wrong?

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xc0000005, 0xF748E0BF, 0xF78E6208, 0xF78E5F08)
*** pci.sys - Address F748E0BF base at F7487000, DateStamp 317d855c

O.K. I couldn't read some of my handwriting (I was writing with a really dull sharpie...only thing I could find), but that should be pretty close to exactly what it said.

 

Is that a pop-up error or does the screen go blue for it? If the screen goes blue for it then click the link in my signature, it explains which Windows Update you've installed that may be causing it.

 

It's a BSOD that appears when it's loading up all of the driver BS when the WinXP disc is booting up. I don't see in your website what could be causing this.

 

The only times I got a BSOD were when using an XP SP3 CD to try to install (breaks the drivers), and after the one Windows update mentioned on my site.

Is the Windows XP disc an original, one slipstreamed with SP2, or something else?

 

I followed the directions on the first page of this post and created a slipstreamed disc from an original XP MCE SP2 disc.

 

You don't need to slipstream the drivers, just SP2. Slipstreaming the drivers makes it more likely to mess something up. Go into your BIOS and set SATA Controller Mode Option to Compatibility, it disables AHCI and allows the XP SP2 installer to see your harddrive, thus you don't need the drivers slipstreamed into the CD.

 

I got it to work. It looks to me like Nlite had removed everything needed for the install. The ISO was only like 450 mbs.

O.K. So now my touchpads buttons are reversed...WTH?

 

erm, the drivers pack also work for the new 6860FX right? since they are almost two identical machines.

 

The only difference between the 6831 and 6860 are the CPU and the harddrive.
The only issue that may cause incompatibility is the new harddrive -- I don't know if the DriverMassStorage package has a driver for it.

 

I used your XP Installation method instead of the one this thread is about, and it's MUCH better and easier. It went just like a normal XP install. Screw nLite. Thanks, bro.

 

You don't need the driver for the harddrive, just for the motherboard's harddrive interface. If you disable AHCI in the BIOS then you won't need that either.

No prob. nLite is still useful if you have an original XP CD and need to slipstream SP2 into it, but yeah, the driver packs are a pain especially since you don't need them.

 

A big thank you for your time and help th3t1nm4n, very helpful and well detailed stuff, my XP install was fast and easy thx to you,

 

Well, whether people use my guide or th3t1nm4n's, this is a bump for those P-6860FX newcomers.

Although, I must agree that even to me, th3t1nm4n's guide looks much cleaner. So th3t1nm4n, if you don't mind, I'm going to put your link in my first post?

 

That's fine. ;D
If you figure out how to get the built-in mic or anything else working, please contact me and I'll add it to my how-to.

 

ditto on the mic. even though it's a small problem, it's still annoying that something doesn't work.

 

I am having some trouble getting various devices to work in XP, specifically:
USB devices, SD card reader, bluetooth, webcam, and the mass storage controller (whatever that is.)
Device manager shows 7 non-working USB Root hubs, plus the "Mass Storage Controller", and 3 "Unknown devices" (ACPI\PNP0C32/1,2,3).
I set up a dual boot and installed XP SP2 in its own partition. This worked fine.
Then I downloaded the driver 7z file and followed the directions on th3t1nm4n's page.
The drivers seemed to have worked except for bluetooth, but further testing revealed the problem items listed above.

Those of you who have these devices working, did you do the SP3 upgrade or other MSFT updates to get things working?
I hate using MSFT updates... don't trust 'em... too many past problems, but I want to get the FX working as much as possible and not having USB support is a big problem.
So do I need to run MSFT updates?
If so which ones, or which ones don't work?
Should I have run them prior to installing the FX drivers (and therefore should start over)?
Thanks in advance.

Update...
I ran windows update. Then ran scan for new hardware from Device Manager. This fixed the USB devices (which included the SD card reader,) mass storage controller, and bluetooth. Then downloaded the Vista software for the webcam from Gateway site and installed it. that fixed the webcam (except the microphone.)

Looks like XP is good for now.
Thanks again.
JG

 

I just downloaded all the updates I could, everything seems to be working fine.

 

I did the install from the first page in this thread (the link http://neonpulse.net/2008/03/06/windows-xp-on-the-gateway-p-6831fx/). I used the XP ultimate black edition. Everything installed fine. I was left with 4 yellow exclamation (!) devices in Device Manager: Mass storage controller and 3 unknown devices. The link from this thread ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=222227) . Post#3 by H4k3r4r34l had the file to fix "Mass Storage Controller".

Now I am still left with 3 "Unknown device" under Other devices. Properties shows Location as "on Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Embedded Controller". Device Instance ID are: (ACPI\PNP0C32\1, ACPI\PNP0C32\2, ACPI\PNP0C32\3). Where can I get drivers for these?

 

Try using a less modified version of XP if you can. Windows XP Pro with SP2 slipstreamed is all you need.

Do not install Service Pack 3, it breaks a few of the drivers.

Those unknown devices are mentioned in the comments on my blog, they're hotkeys for Vista that launch applications using the glowing buttons above your keyboard, there are no drivers for them in XP and they aren't needed since XP doesn't have the media center to launch things with.

 

**** issue resolved ****

 

Hey, I will b doin XP install but I only have XP Pro without SP2
Is that a problem ? I see everywhere it mentions u install with SP2 integrated into win cd and that I shouldn't download sp3 as it breaks the drivers.
So can I install just xp pro ? and then go to win update and pick to install sp2 ? Or did win update change and u can nolonger update only sp2 and u have to go to sp3 ?
hopefully what I wrote makes sene

 

Great review!
Just a question: memory card reader appears as a removable disk [F: on my computer]… is that normal? can i change this? can i hide “Safely Remove Hardware” icon?
I have downloaded memory card reader driver from gateway website
thank´s

 

Huge question - Are the found drivers for XP 64 bit as well ? Or only 32 bit ?

Thanks a ton. I still have mine with a fresh vista install, but the more I use it the more vista p*ss** me off. Its more pain the rump than I can express. And Ive been tweaking it for months now, gah.

Anywho I want to take advantage of having a full 4 gigs of ram so wanted to go to XP 64.

Thanks for the help.

 

There are just XP 32bit compatible I believe.

 

Some people run 64-bit XP. Read the comments here for more info:
http://neonpulse.net/2008/03/06/windows-xp-on-the-gateway-p-6831fx/

 

I don't know why everyone is keep saying sp3 will cause problems, I used xp pro with sp3 integrated did not install the 3.5 framework and all is working fine.
All hardware recognized. Of course except the 3 unknown devices which 2 are the multimedia controls and one is seems to be some ACPI component that only works in Vista. XP holding strong 7986 3dmarks06 with stock gpu settings.
Very snappy. Will do dual boot with Vista x64 Ultimate.

Unfortunately the right speaker volume is very low like others mentioned.

 

hey everyone, new guy here, i have the p6831fx and i love it. i just got a 24" 1920x1200 monitor and i'm trying to play games like WoW and such on it. It seems i've hit the video cards max as the FPS is really poor at that resolution. Turning the graphics to 16 bit helps somewhat, but does anyone think running XP instead of Vista would improve my FPS significantly with resolutions that large? I'm trying to decide if it's worth the hassle of installing XP for better FPS.