P-7811 FX Drivers

Dragon, that is the awesome (downloads driver pack)... I was under the impression that xp home wouldn't utilize dual-core processors, but i'm finding my impressions about things related to downgrading to xp i've been told are unfounded. = )

I downloaded your driver pack and plan on going to dual boot eventually. If you have a log or blog of details about what you did, i'd love to read it!

Many thanks for your hard work finding the xp32 drivers! = )

 

Here is a step by step for dual boot adding XP to Vista. It's easy with XP first but a little more involved with Vista first.
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_...talled_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm?page=2

 

SW33T! = )

The guys at best buy make it sound like this stuff is impossible, and you guys already have it basically done for a brand-new machine like our p-7811fx!

Thank you Syngensmyth/DragonRider/everybody. = )

 

Very helpful list, especially now with all the separate drivers, if you're only looking for a select few. Great work!

 

I could never get it to work properly with Vista installed first. One OS or the other kept having problems. The easiest thing is probably to boot off the XP disk, delete both the C: and D: partitions to create a single block of unpartitioned space (DON'T delete the other, smaller partition...I think something bad happens if you do), install XP, and then follow the XP-to-Vista guide from there.

While we're on the topic: does anyone know how to get GParted (or a similar partition manager) working on this laptop? I downloaded an ISO and burned it to a CD with Daemon Tools, but I can't boot off of it. Hitting F10 on startup and choosing the disk drive does nothing, and I don't get the "Press any key to boot from disk" option like the OS disks give. I wound up having to use the Vista disk's built-in DISKPART utility, but that only lets you shrink the partition by half. In the long run, I'd like to devote only, say, 40-60 gigs to Vista and save the rest for XP rather than having to go with 80 for each.

Also: if two partitions both have operating systems on them, can you directly move partition space from one to the other, or do you have to delete one first to change the sizes?

 

Installing XP after Vista screws the Vista boot loader. Easy to fix.

Burn GParted with IMGBurn.

Partition size does not care what is on it, ie OS or whatever.

 

Dragon: I had that very same problem and wrote about it in another thread here somewhere. Never could get it to work. From what I can read in this thread, no one can get sound to work on this laptop using XP32?

 

Syngensmith: Thanks, that got it to work.

Flowah: Technically, the you can get the sound to work. The UAA driver is capable of getting the devices to appear, and manually forcing a driver onto the right audio device as per the directions on that site will give you sound. The problem is the UAA driver not kicking in automatically. You just have to go into the device manager and disable and re-enable "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio" under System Devices after every startup (you don't have to reinstall anything, at least). It's a pain, but it works, it only takes a few seconds each time, and it's a lot better than nothing. Maybe I'll put a text file with a description of the whole process in the driver folder I uploaded...but I guess I'll wait until we have something more substantial to add to it. We still need drivers for the camera, the media card reader, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't even really know about and probably aren't terribly important to most people.

For the time being, I think I'm just going to stick with a dual-boot, put all my older stuff on XP and my newer stuff on Vista, and deal with the nuisance of switching between them a lot. After I get used to the pros and cons of each operating system, maybe I'll concentrate more things on one or the other (though a bunch of stuff will require XP no matter what).

 

I am getting my 7811 this weekend, and i am going to be new to vista. So my question is once i get my laptop then what? I mean after i remove the bloatware, and create a backup disc, what should i download? I hear alot about this ares thing...that worth downloading?...


also how exactly do you even create a backup disc? does go through the process on first time boot up?

 

as to the driver recovery cd its all in your manual, i say just do what ever you bought it for, enjoy it

 

And I agree wholeheartedly. Enjoy that bad boy.

 

That's what' you see right? And then when you restart, the Conexant/HDMI just disappear? Same problem I had, except I was on x64 and even when I saw those two devices, my sound didn't really work, it showed up, I just couldn't hear anything.

But you can actually hear something right?

 

i dunno mine came with an os restore disk, so i don't plan on making a os/application recovery dvd.

 

Yeah, that's what it looks like (although I don't have the HDMI audio...I guess that's what the other High Definition Audio device was supposed to be?). As long as the Conexant sound is visible there, I get full, working sound. When it's gone, I get no sound at all (except for this horrid scratching sound in place of the little error tone).

Maybe it's a 64-bit thing. Are you sure the driver you used is 64-compatible? Sometimes the XP32 and XP64 drivers are different.

 

The OS restore disc isn't the same thing as the OS/Application Recovery DVD. The former is just the OS with no drivers, the latter is a complete restoration of your laptop out of the box. I think it'd handy to have, especially if you sell it in the future. Before you format and reinstall Vista, you should also create the driver DVD. They're available here but it's convenient to have a hard copy.

DragonRider, can you do me a favor and see if the Chicony Camera install files under Vista 64 work for you in XP32?

 

Oh hey, it does! And the media card driver works too! I guess now I don't have to look for them.

The microphone for the camera doesn't work, though. The dropdown menu for audio input is empty in the settings. It's probably one of the other two audio devices that show up when you get the UAA thing working.

 

Great, adding to the XP list. Thanks again.

 

Thats what I assume is the problem. I was just confirming that you do indeed get full working sound under XP32. You do only get 3GB or RAM to be recognized right? I think I may just do that seeing as how Vista gives me such a **** headache with installing things like Battlefield 2

 

Does anyone here still have the folder "C:\ACER" still intact on their notebook? I think this is used for the driver recovery. I tried to do a driver recovery and it said they don't exist. Sadly like a dumb a$$ I deleted it think it would free space and I was also not counting on the drivers not being available on the website. I have since downloaded the audio drivers from this thread but I think it would come in handy to have that directory available. I'm not sure reloading the operating system with the supplied disc will reload this directory either. Don't want to blow away all the stuff I've already loaded.

 

Yeah, only 3066MB RAM shows up in dxdiag when XP is running. That should still be more than enough to run pretty much any game out there today though, right? It's still probably about equal to (or maybe even better than) four gigs after Vista is through with it.

 

Question: If I were to buy a USB sound card, like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829128002

and I didn't have drivers installed for the onboard sound on the 7811, I could still get sound right? I'm considering just installing XP x64 for access to the full 4GB of ram, using an external USB soundcard for sound, and leaving it at that. Would it work?

 

Ashura: I did another rapidshare upload, if you want to replace the one in the first post sometime soon. This one includes everything we've found so far for XP32 (including the two newest ones), as well as some instructions explaining the situation with the sound drivers.

http://rapidshare.com/files/139584023/Gateway_P-7811_FX_Drivers__XP32_.ace

 

Your link=not working.

 

I don't know which USB soundcard you're talking about but your theory sounds like it should work with no problems. I personally use the ASUS Xonar U1 which I'm very very happy with, and I'm pretty sure it has XP64 drivers.

Thanks, updated.

 

Thanks DragonRider, that seemed to work. At least it did install and shows that it's working although I haven't had a chance to actually hook it up to anything.

 

I can't say for sure if your link works or not but eventually I did download http://drivers.synaptics.com/Synaptics_Driver_v10_1_8_Vista32.exe and it did work with Vista 32. The problem I had was that I needed to modify the security settings. I can't recall the exact error now but it was related to UAC and if will give you the error when you try to install. Then you need to go in to the local securty policy and make a modification. It may be just that the version of Vista 32 that I installed disabled it and perhaps it is normally enabled.

 

The last item is the audio. My audio still works but none of the conexant drivers here work. I'm not sure what's happening but the pictures I've seen of device manager shown 6 or so entries under audio and mine shows only 2 and they are both named "High Definition Audio Device". No mater what driver I try I get "Driver Installation Failed: Cound not find the MEDIA device for this driver". Oh well. If I figure it out I will post it.

 

Anybody try XP x64 on this laptop yet? I'm reformatting my hdd right now and putting it on. Hopefully I'll be able to find all the needed drivers.

 

Just to let everyone know, I got Windows XP x64 to work on the P-7811. I'm using it right now with no problems, EXCEPT the audio drivers. I can't seem to find any that work. I'll keep looking at keep you guys posted.

 

How did you get it installed? Each time I've tried it crashes during the install process at "Starting Windows.."

I even tried F5 during the detection process and manually chose the multi-proc ACPM (or whatever) setting.

Thanks for any advice!

Jeff

 

I guess a quick fix (albeit you'll have to spend $) would be to get the Creative X-Fi Express Card for audio...

Has anyone successfully installed a clean WinXP 32bit on this machine (minus the audio)? I know that would only allow me to utilize 3gb of memory but I needed the 32 bit version to make sure my dental management software worked completely stable locally as well as thru VPN. Also, has anyone experienced the lockups/freezing with winxp 32bit while doing regular tasks (MS Word, surfing, Acrobat, etc) and separately, gaming?

 

Does anyone still have C:\ACER on their P-7811X? I need it.

 

You have to enter in the bios and switch the HDD setting from either Sata, or AHCI (cant remember) to IDE. Its really easy to find in the Bios.

 

Or you can slipstream the SATA drivers into a WinXP install disk (if you don't want to emulate IDE mode and leave the BIOS setting for SATA).

Here's a guide by Maximum PC:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_slipstream_windows_xp_sp3_and_vista_sp1

But if you google it, you'll find other sites explaining pretty much the same thing. You'll need to get your hands on nLite (XP) or vLite (Vista); a free download though.

 

I could be wrong, but I think the problem is the driver for the disk controller in AHCI mode. If you go into the BIOS and select plain SATA mode, I think it will fix the problem. Alternately, you can get the Fn6 driver from Intel for XP x64 for AHCI mode and do the install a driver routine when starting the XP install.

Ira

 

If you choose the F6 option, you will need to format a thumb drive as floppy and put the drivers there. Here is a good guide for doing that.

 

Thanks Syngensmyth, I've been looking for that! I've been wanting to make a bootable thumb drive out of my 8mb Sony Microstick inserted into a USB adapter.

Now what should I do with that 16 mb CF card...

 

What does this have to do me needing the C:\ACER folder that is on the hard drive of a P-7811FX? Does anyone with a P-7811FX have this folder?

 

Why do you want that folder?

 

Hey hyawatha,

Could you provide a list of links to the XP64 drivers?

 

LOL poked the wrong button. Sorry.

Was trying to get this:

 

I deleted the C:\ACER folder. I think it's used for the Gateway Recovery Management program. It lets you create driver and application backups and of course recover them later. Would be nice to be able to create this disc. I'm not sure how big the folder is but if someone could zip it up and post it I would really appreciate it.

 

its really late right now, ill do it 2maro around 11am central time.

EDIT: XP x64 Drivers I used:

All of the Vista x64 drivers worked for me with XP x64 except for the video, sound, and wifi driver.

I got the wifi driver here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...nal+x64+Edition&lang=eng&strOSs=109&submit=Go!

The video driver I got here: http://laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp64/177.92 Make sure you download the modded INF file with it. The link is right next to the download link for the driver and replace the inf file with the driver you downloaded.

I still have yet to get my sound working. If anybody has any idea of getting the sound to work on XP, I think I can convert the driver to XP x64.

 

I installed Vista Ultimate 32-bit on my 7811FX and could not get the microphones to work. I was using the Conexant drivers from this forum and they just didn't work at all. I don't think the 7811FX has Conexant audio, or at least mine doesn't.

I loaded the IDT/SigmaTel Audio Drivers for the 6860FX and now everything works fine. They were automatically detected as the compatible versions. The drivers are on the Gateway support site, and I think they might support XP as well as Vista:

ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardware_support/drivers/win_vista/audio/D20253-001-001.exe

Note: they initially didn't work, but after rebooting I right-clicked them in device manager and used online update. They appeared to switch back to "high definition audio" but then went back to IDT. Immediately everything worked, including both the headphone microphone and the webcam microphone.

 

I was able to unhide the "PQSERVICE" partition via the DISKPART utility and copy all the files to an external disk. (The "AcerBoot" folder is in there, if that is what you're looking for..)

Although I haven't tried too hard, I was unable to find any particular utility therein that would create me any kind of restore CD, etc. from the files. If someone knows how, that'd be great. I only backed it up because I plan on wiping out all the partitions and installing XP64, and was worried I might need something someday...

If someone needs something, I'm happy to dump it all somewhere... the only problem is the whole set it about 7.22 gigs or so. The "AcerBoot" folder alone is 213 MB.

I don't have a centralized "file storage" account anywhere, but I'm happy to send the files to someone who does so they can post them and share with all who need them.


Jeff

 

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6Y7WUZBG

I zipped and uploaded the c:\acer directory here.. it's a BIG one! Just shy of 700MB, so may take ya a while to download. But, hopefully it can solve your problems.

 

I tried the driver and it tells me that the device object is not present.

EDIT: I found this forum where there are people supposedly finding a fix for the driver, but for other notebooks. I've tried it, but cant get it to work. I might be doing something wrong, so if you guys try it and get it to work, let me know!

http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=37282

 

Don't run the setup, it WILL state that the object isn't present. Do this:

1. Open Device Manager and find your current audio drivers. They might just say "High Definition Audio".

2. Right-Click each of them and select "Update Driver Software".

3. Browse to the WDM folder inside IDT drivers folder. You can choose either Vista or XP.

4. After updating them it may give a code 10, could not start error, on your audio. If that happens, repeat step 2 above and use online update. I'm not sure what gets downloaded but whatever it is fixes it.

Here's what mine looks like after done:

 

Tried what you said and it just says that it cannot continue the update wizard. This problem is causing some games to work, including CoD4.

 

Thanks hyawatha, updated with the XP64 info.