D900F (or Sager 9280) - XP Compatible?

I'm thinking about getting the D900F as my desktop replacement laptop and I notice that the Clevo website only has Windows Vista drivers available. Does anyone know if XP, (or x64 XP), will run on the laptop? I ask because my main OS is Linux, and my Windows needs are pretty limited, (pretty much only Outlook and Powerpoint). I already own 2 - XP, and 2 - x64 XP licenses, and would like to use XP as my Windows OS on the D900F, if I can.

Also is the currently available Clevo D900F, (or the Sager 9280), the most recent Clevo revision, (the 901F?)? Or do you need to make sure to ask that when you place your order with your reseller?

Thanks

 

Yes, XP will work on the D900F, the drvers are all easy to find around the web, or I believe Gophn has compiled a list if you ask him nicely.

 

Thanks very much. I just wanted to know it was kosher, before going too far down the path of getting one.

 

Yes and no.

Clevo does not officially support "native" XP for the D900F.

I can tell you this because the BIOS has conflicts with XP when you install it... so you have to do a few things to get around it.

However, you can use "virtualization" to use XP environment within Vista without issues it seems.

I will try to elaborate on this soon after my tests.

 

Let me guess: XP does not accept the HD drives being in AHCI mode?
If this can not be changed in the BIOS, there may be software that can help.
I have seen this discussed before, somewhere - just can't remember where.

 

Oh yes, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci

 

it does accept AHCI... with drivers that you can get from Intel.com

its the ACPI that is the problem that I initially encountered

 

Ah, ok.
Well, there's a whole bunch of people here eagerly awaiting your review, Mr. Gophn. ;-) Where are the D900F owners? Too busy playing with their new toy?

 

All you need to do is slipstream the AHCI drivers.

ACPI is where the bulk of the issues lie, especially with a XP Pro SP3 disk.

You need to use at least an SP2 disk for PCI-E support.

Outside of that, the drivers are available from basically any vanilla X58 drivers, Jmicron, Nvidia and a few other places to clean up the needed install list.

 

Here is a update from one of Sager's Engineers:

Sager and Clevo are not officially supporting Windows XP on NP9280, as Windows 7 is very close to release and the time and energy required to run windows xp driver validation is simply not feasible.

However, we have encouraged end users who still wish to use XP to find appropriate driver support, etc. on the Internet. We understand this takes a bit of legwork but we hope the customers under our position on this topic.

However, after reading this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=400786 over the weekend that there are issues that are preventing XP from being installed. Sager engineers worked over the weekend with Clevo and have received a test BIOS this morning. We are in the process of testing and verifying that this fixes the ACPI issue.

D900F BIOS 1.00.03i for XP in testing.

 

If you are consideration a VM:

Then I can offer my own experience.

I use vmware to run XP-Pro. I pretty much have setup a XP VM per client I service. Effectively giving me a clean environment for each.

All I can say is the the D900F does not even blink at running stuff in the VM, on top of that all my VMs are inside encrypted virtual HDs. The D900F is a workstation by heart really

On the other hand is you want native XP for gaming, audio or video processing etc. that may be another story ...

 

IS this BIOS available yet. I have been running into this problem on my d900f and I would really like to load XP.

 

Yes. If your reseller can't provide you with the BIOS update, you can download it from the links in this post.

Good Luck..

 

Regarding the D900F bios installation procedures

Do I have to reboot the D900F after I finish running STEP1.bat ?

Or do I run STEP2.bat right after I run STEP1.bat without a reboot ?



Thanks

Sparky894

 

The system will reboot itself after you flash the keyboard firmware.

 

keyboard firmware ???

 

step1.bat - KBC/EC controller (keyboard firmware)

step2.bat - bios

You MUST flash the KBC/EC before the BIOS (hence step1 & step2)

 

A big thank you for the explanation !!!