The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Installing XP on a Sony Vista laptop

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by Steve24, Jun 25, 2007.

  1. Steve24

    Steve24 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi Y'all,

    Friend of mine bought a Sony VGN-N21S, which only came with Vista pre-installed. Ran too slowly, so he wanted XP instead, but of course Sony hadn't posted the XP drivers for this laptop. No problem... :)

    The previous model, the VGN-N11S (pre-loaded with XP), has almost exactly the same hardware - same motherboard chipset, graphics and sound cards, etc. I downloaded the XP drivers for this earlier model directly from Sony, burnt them onto CD and installed. Only problem was the sound card popped up as "PCI ..." and couldn't match the right driver. So I downloaded the latest driver from Realtek, and everything carried on without problems. Every possible device is now up and running with the appropriate drivers.

    I would suggest that if you want to dump Vista for XP on your new laptop, but Sony won't give you the XP drivers, look at the previous version of your Sony laptop with the closest matching specifications. You'll probably find they will work.

    Stephen.