A135-S4527 HD Problem with XP

Installed XP on an A135-S4527. Found all the drivers except one unknown device. Everything was working. No problems for over a week.

Turned on the machine and no HD was found. Went directly to PXE boot. Checked BIOS. No HD.

Pulled the HD and put it on a desktop. Disk was fine. Made it the primary and let it get to the splash page to make sure the MBR and boot track were ok. Put it back in the A135 and BIOS couldn't find it.

Took the computer back to the store. Got another one. Reloaded XP. This one went 4 days. Wouldn't boot. This time the HD showed in BIOS but the boot sequence went directly to PXE. It would boot a CD and a USB fob (knoppix) but it never would find the HD. The linux instance couldn't locate the HD. Neither could Spintrite 6.0.

Took that one back and the nice people gave me a third A135. Very nice people.

Here's my problem. There are threads on this forum and several others that have posters reporting success at loading XP on this model. I haven't had problems before loading alternative OS on computers (as long as you can find the drivers). What's up with this HD problem? Should I go for another XP install or just suffer with Vista?

I looked on the Toshiba site. Their 1.10 and 1.20 BIOS updates for this model specifically say it's for Vista and not to be used "with XP or other Windows versions." Might they have an ACPI extension that's getting messed up by a BIOS write-back from XP? I'm no hardware engineer and I don't know about this stuff.

 

Hey, OldDude: Sorry for piggy-backing on your thread (but am a newbie & haven't figured out how to start my own thread) ---- I'm considering replacing my VISTA with XP and am wondering if it's a big deal finding drivers for the S4527. Talked to Tech Support and they say -- don't try to swap out Vista for XP -- there are no XP drivers available. So you must have gone to a 3d party site to download those drivers. Any suggestions? (Hope I don't have that trouble with a disappearing HD ) Thanks in advance, Bill

 

There's a button in the upper left hand corner that says New Thread. Just click on that when you want to start a new one.

 

BillyJim,

I'll give you some pointers but please return the favor by reporting back. I'd like to know if an S4527 with XP will work for more than a week.

The names of the drivers I downloaded from various sites follow. Some I got from other Toshiba models. Some I got from Realtek. Use Google and be persistent. Search the Realtek site. You can also use the Huntersoft program UnknownDeviceIdentifier.exe

driver_wifi_atheros_25315F.exe (if you have the atheros wifi)
driver_wifi_intel_25485B.exe (if you have the intel wifi)
ndis51_663.zip
Realtek_Gigabit_LAN_MB.zip or Realtek_LAN_10_100_MB.zip (I don't remember which one works but one of them does.)
RTL8168_8101E_664_200704.zip (this has the drivers for several OS including XP) or you can find RTL8101E_Driver_664.zip
win2k_xp14272.exe (this is the Intel 945GM chipset driver)
That should give you a good start.

JO

PS: You can also go over to http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?folderId=10&nav=messages&webtag=ws-laptop&mode=13

They have several threads about downgrading to XP

PPS: There is actually a much simpler way to take care of some of the drivers. Load XP the best you can from the install disks. Then put in the recovery/driver disk that comes with the A135. Select to load the drivers and software instead of recovering the Vista installation. Load the drivers from there. Some won't work because they are specific to Vista. Some of them will. I found my last driver, the modem, that way.