Hate Vista, Cant find XP drivers Satellite A305D-S6848

I just cant stand vista, plus non of the programs that I normally use work on vista, so I totally wiped out vista and installed XP, but now I cant find any drivers for my Satellite A305D-S6848... please help...

im missing
LAN
WiFI
Video Ati
Sm Bus
Modem

the only thing I got working is the audio and dang camera lol

thanks again...

its getting harder and harder for Xp peeps

 

If you know what brand/model the devices are you can google them and find drivers for them.

 

The Ati was easy enough, but I cant for the life of me find the others stuff

Lan
WiFI -- I think I found it
SM
Modem
card reader

how would I find the makes?

 

See if Windows' Device Manager knows.

Another source would be if Toshiba offers Vista drivers online, those driver files may be labeled with the component make and model... so you may be able to tell that way.

There are also some hardware detection/identification programs around.

And as for LAN... that's pretty standard I think... won't Windows' built-in driver work?

 

And also, you can try other vendor’s drivers for components for your Toshiba.
I have done this with great success. If Toshiba don’t have X driver, try another like Dell or HP, intel et al for that driver.

 

What about the custom windows update let it scan then look at the hardware see if it picks anything up.

 

Doesn't for me actually.

 

If you remember the name of the hardware, or anything regarding the previous drivers....you can search for them on google or version tracker..!!

And do you know what brand does each hardware have..??

If Toshiba's site hasn't got them....it is unlikely you will find them anywhere else....

 

What's unfortunate is that if you really got rid of Vista because of what you heard and not because you were really having the problems you claim, then all this headache was for nothing. If Toshiba doesn't have what you need, it will definitely leave you in a touch position.

 

According to your model's spec sheet, you have an Atheros 802.11 b/g wireless card. There appear to be Atheros wireless card drivers available here; I assume they work with XP as the newest ones don't say except for the one that says Beta Vista. 3.11.48 does have an XP-specific one (as opposed to Win2K), but 5.0.0.107 should be fine (no guarantees). Provided that goes as I expect, that should get your wireless (and with it Internet) up and working.

Toshiba's support for it is pretty poor though. I didn't find even Vista drivers on their site, only a BIOS update. For the rest of the stuff, I'd try to identify it with programs that can identify that sort of stuff. If you can figure out what model you have, there's a decent chance someone will know where to find XP drivers. The other thing you could try is installing the Vista drivers - for some things the drivers are actually the same, and it wouldn't surprise me if Ethernet and modem were.

And indeed, XP doesn't seem to support Ethernet out-of-box, or at least not current Ethernet cards. I encountered that problem as well.

 

I GOT INternet! woo hoo!! Realtek RTL8139 for xp!

but my wireless is still out along with the modem..

 

Maybe its just me but I can't find your laptop on Toshibas site?

Anyway I did come across this, http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/satellite/A300#specgrid which is the same model as yours a300? the only thing that differs between yours and the three in the link is the end two numbers.

And as they say they all have Atheros wifi I find this, http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlViewDL.jsp?soid=616346

 

I am also trying to install XP on the A305D-S6848. Toshiba.SAT, can you tell me which drivers you have gotten to work. I have not even been able to get ATI drivers to work.
Thanks

 

I dont understand, 99% of apps are now easily useable on vista.....what apps do not work for you?

If like me it is just the pure fact that vista is slooooooooooowwww. Try reinstalling the x64 version, i garantee you will not be dissapointed. I hate 32 bit vista, 64 bit vista is a pocket rocket in comparrison

 

I just bought a A305D-S6848 today and am in the process of setting up XP on it. I already have the Atheros wireless NIC working, and the ATI driver is almost done downloading now.

This isn't the first time I've wiped a laptop with Vista and reinstalled XP before. I've had experience hunting down missing drivers. I'll remember to post links to all the working drivers I find when I'm done. Least this way, anyone coming across this topic will have a complete set of working drivers for XP.

 

Almost three and a half hours later, I've found drivers for almost everything. The only unknown devices I have left are three unknown "Base Devices", and an unknown "Modem Device on High Definition Audio Bus" created from the UAA hotfix. The hardest driver to find was the HD audio driver.

I'm going to attempt to hunt down drivers for those four other unknown devices. It doesn't (as far as I can tell) make any difference if they're working or not. I'll throw up a zip archive within the next few days (unless something comes up where I can't) with all of the drivers needed, along with documentation.

 

Hello Rianthas,

I have XP now in my A305D, and waoo! I can not belive how hard is to find the drivers. Can you please let me know the links for each of the driver you already have? especially the Video and sound.
Thank you very much for ur help, after that I will join the hunting for the rest left...

 

I'll type out instructions with what to do, and zip up all the drivers and installers I have and post them within the next hour or two, hopefully.

I still haven't found drivers for the modem, or the three base system devices, but they're really minor things that can wait.

Oh, and setting up the sound is a little tricky. The unknown PCI Device is actually a high definition audio bus and you need to apply a specific driver to it first before you can set up sound.

 

Small problem. The archive with all the drivers is megabytes short of 200MB. I'm trying to get a hold of one of my friends who owns mytechzone.net. I have an FTP account on his server, but I don't remember my login name. I didn't get to choose it, and I bought this laptop because my previous laptop hard drive died and I lost all the data I had on it, and the laptop itself was three years old.

When I get a hold of him and I get the archive uploaded, I'll post back. The link should be http://landus.mytechzone.net/XP Drivers.zip and the instructions will be at http://landus.mytechzone.net/Instructions.txt.

Please don't try these links until I post back. If you happen to click on them while I'm uploading the files, you'll probably get an incompletely/corrupted archive.

 

Everything is uploaded and the links in my previous thread are working. Good luck. The instructions are pretty detailed for spending only half an hour typing them up. Follow them before you post here or attempt to contact me with issues.

Any problems, please reply to this topic. I'll remember to check this thread at least once a day and provide as much help as I can until go back to college in late August.

I can be reached on AIM at "MS Computer Help" if days go by and I don't respond.

 

Deleted. Didn't mean to double-post, stupid touchpad. Nevermind.

 

Awesome thanks guys!

 

Thanks for all the drivers Rianthis, that was a big help.

Had 3 Base System Devices listed in the Device Manager after I installed everything and got everything working. Had no idea what they were. SD reader worked, camera worked, wireless worked, modem worked, NIC worked, Display Adapter worked, and HD sound worked.

Ran a driver utility and it said that three drivers were wrong, using Microsoft IDE Controllers and I needed ATI controllers. Tried changing the drivers and they all installed as IDE Primary and Secondary controllers, but now I have 3 of each with yellow exclamation marks on them saying not enough free resources. No clue what to do, everything is working, XP runs fine, just an annoying list in the DM that is bothering me.

Did you run into any of this? Anyone else have this issue? Not sure if I just leave it be or try and fix it.

Thanks
Mike

 

Wait so why do you hate Vista?

 

I don't "hate" it, but I definitely don't like it. Applications that come pre-installed such as Roxio from Dell don't run on it, it's dog-arse slow compared to XP, and there are just too many problems with it. Security questions are a PITA.

But basically it falls under the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I know XP frontwards and back, and learning a new system that offers me no benefit is silly to me. It's not more secure, I have read (and actually watched) about the security holes/issues with it, and it's been an overall nightmare for MS. So much so they already have a new OS in the works to be "release" in 09/10 called Windows 7 (for now).

 

I think it's great. It's much faster than XP for me. It's not hard to use. Every application I throw at it works. And never keep the pre-loaded crap Dell gives you on a machine.

You should be part of the mojave experiment

 

He sounds like a pretty die-hard XP fan to me...no sense in trying to convince him otherwise. BTW, a lot of your problems are really minor and silly though, and its ironic how most of them aren't even Vista's fault. But oh well.

 

I used to be die-hard XP also. He's gotta switch eventually

 

Clean install fixes that, and it takes about 10 seconds to desactivate UAC, which is less annoying than Linux's imo.

 

True, but it's a question of what he has to switch to; XP's still got a lotta legs, and _Vista ain't the only game in town.

 

I would suggest rolling back the drivers to the previous Microsoft IDE controllers for the time being.

 

I personally don't like Vista simply because of the design, the lack of functionality, and the numerous current problems with it. I've used it on countless occasions, and know how it works and feels. I don't like it.

It's going to probably take the same twist XP did. It's going to suck for two years while Microsoft and the rest of the world hunts down and fixes all the bugs and vulnerabilities. At that point, it'll be a decent, working operating system.

 

I've also found the drivers for the three unknown base system devices.

For the moment you can download the installer off Toshiba's website until I can update the archive on MyTechZone.

 

Oh, and here's the modem driver.

You may have to manually pick out the driver from driver list. Just scroll down to Motorola and pick the TOSHIBA SM56 Data Fax Modem.

I'll update the XP Drivers archive and instructions text file (and put the text file in the archive this time) later tonight so the archive on MyTechZone should be up-to-date with all the drivers needed to get XP working.

 

Archive on MyTechZone is up-to-date, along with the readme text.

 

hi.
i´ve instaled all drivers for win xp, and yeaaa, the laptop is faster, is much better, but i have a little problem.
i can´t install value added package, so i don´t use toshiba function keys.
somebody can to help me. may be exist any way to crak or force this utylities to run in windows xp...
thaks a lot..

 

bump.

I cant get the Value Added Package to work either. I need it because I need the FN keys to adjust the screen brightness. Right now, XP is chewing up my battery life because of the brightness.

I am curious how you got it to work Rianthas, because I extracted the package with WinRar and found three different setup files: one that ends with msi which doesn't work, another that runs the Toshiba splash screen but doesn't actually install anything, and a third which tries to install, but tells me my operating system isnt sufficient enough...

Any ideas? Thanks!!!

 

Great work done by Tianthas! I just encounter this topic when i considering HPdv5Z or Toshiba to get, both of them equipped with AMD puma.
How do you think of the build quality of TOshiba, compared to HP.
If i choose HPdv5z,main drawback would be the method to install xp on that laptop was lacked. And HP seem to have the reputation of overheating. But it have HDMI port and a better IGP.
Anyone can give some advices? Any reply would be appreciated!

 

It could be because I'm running a SP3 beta. The FN keys don't work for me either, neither do the media controls.

I'll look into this and try getting the FN keys to work. I'm unsure about the media control keys, though. It seems that the Toshiba HWSetup utility controls them.

 

I'm unsure how I got the Value Added pack to install myself. I may have downloaded it, attempted to get it to run, but didn't and forgot about any error I received.

The bad news is that there's really nothing I can do. The value added pack that Toshiba has released is for Vista only, and won't install under XP. The only two possible alternatives is looking into a temporary registry change to fool the installer into thinking the OS is Vista, or calling up Toshiba and complaining about the unavailability of a XP edition of the value package.

 

I already called Toshiba about the Value Added package, and they said sorry, "not available in XP for your model". Oh well, in the mean time, I am using the Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) program to get more battery life, about 2 hours (I got more like 3hrs in Vista, but I hate that OS). As for the media buttons, I could care less... Thanks, Rianthas, keep us posted!

 

Give me some time. Eventually, Toshiba will get tired of my calling on a daily basis and release an XP VAP installer.

 

After calling, the tech I talked to said he would look into this and forward something on to the division that writes drivers and whatnot. I have a reference number, and I'll continue to call it at least two days a week until something happens.

If it comes to the point where it's obvious that Toshiba isn't doing anything, I'll just call every day.

 

Wow, you must really know how to negotiate with large corporations, Rianthas. I've called Toshiba several times, and they blow me off, tell me to take my computer to a warranty repair center lol.

I guess the main reason I ditched Vista on my S6848 was because it was too slow... All the preinstalled garbage didnt help, but installing it didnt do much either. I couldnt even turn on the machine without it freezing up at the Vista logo just before the login screen... Did you experience this problem too?

Keep up the good work!

 

great news! on the amd website, i found an XP driver for the processor which enable speedswitching and other modes, which has enabled me to get 2.5 to 3 hours on my battery instead of 1.5 or 2!!!

HTML:

[B]AMD Processor Driver Version 1.3.2.0053 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64)[/B] - Allows the system to automatically adjust the CPU speed, voltage and power combination to match the instantaneous user performance need. This package is a user friendly localized software installation of the driver designed for end-users. This driver supports AMD processors on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP2 x86 and x64 Editions.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/AMD_Processor_Driver_1320053.zip

 

Gook work. Glad to know someone else is also looking around for drivers.

I'll include that in the archive on mytechzone eventually.

 

I refused to use it much. I have previous experience with it, including its problems with software and hardware and didn't want to put myself through that. I'm used to XP, and it's still a decent working OS. Maybe in a year or two, I'll consider Vista.

I'm both a PC/Network consulting and temp as a PC/Network technician. I have to deal with people and sometimes, large corporations. I can be extremely manipulative, and I know how to get people to see my point of view. All I did was level with the guy 100% on the problem, and he said he'd forward something on to the department that would release a XP driver. Then again, he was more apt to help once I pointed out that Toshiba still provides complete support for both XP and Vista.

 

Has anybody thought about test driving eBoostr for XP???

 

No. The software looks like an unstable mess. Aside from that, this is the wrong topic to ask for software advice.

 

Hi im from uruguay a friend bougth this toshiba for me in the usa and i been reading this thread to see for the drivers, i have good news i find some drivers for a215 and they work, i mean i could low the brigth of the screen but i dont know how to use the power saver well this is the page http://driverstoshiba.blogspot.com/