Sony Vaio VGN-FW373J/B downgrade to XP???

Hello!
I just got a Sony Vaio VGN-FW373J/B. I figured I'll give Vista a try but I hate it. I would like to know if anybody tried downgrading this model to XP? Sony tech support told me they don't have the downgrade DVDs for this model. Is there anything I can do?

 

Downloading pirated M$ XP.
Adding SATA support driver with n-lite
Burning or CD-RW
Hoping to boot because most of the new SATA hdd's are having problems with XP's non-SATA support (no such driver included)
Have a try, report

NRC

*Edit: And if you are geek and make it, please report to this thread do no click now

 

Took a lot of work and searches for the right drivers. 2 outstanding problems: I need a driver for the VGA video controller and the one for the modem, which I can live without, I guess. If I try to download them from Sony's site, I can only get them for 64 bit so they won't install.
The graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650. Can anyone help please???

 

I am on the same boat - I really want to know if it is possible to have a WinXP on the current version of FW (FW355 or FW378 or FW390). To my knowledge, based on a search of this forum, it has not been done. I do not have a laptop yet b/c I want to know first if I can run WinXP 32-bit on this machine. One solution I was offered on this forum is to have Vista and run WinXP as a virtual machine.

There are WinXP drivers, however, for the earlier version FW190. Here is the link:
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...VGNFW190&LOC=3

Do you care to do a research / experiment which WinXP drivers from FW190 can be used for your FW373...

Please, keep us posted.

 

@const451 - Yes...its possible to run win XP on all sony FWs. I have a sony FW currently, and have a triple boot of win XP 32bit, vista 64bit and win7 64bit. I use xp as my main operating system, and after an initial problem (with my matrix storage controller - caused random crashes) i reinstalled xp and it's running perfectly now, with no crashes to date! I highly recommend the sony FW, its a beautiful machine. hope this helps

 

the drivers for yr ATI GPU does NOT require a Sony brand notebook or whatever it be. Just download them from ATi's web page

 

Wesmo - thanks for the reply. What model of FW do you run triple boot?? Sony provides only Vista 64-bit drivers for the current models of FW - FW355, FW378, FW390. Someone suggested to me to get the WinXP drivers from the previous models.

 

Hi const451 - i run a customised sony FW3 (see my signature at the bottom). Yeah, i had to use drivers from other models of the FW, and then use univeral extractor to actually extract the drivers from the sony prepared installation .exes (the sony driver installation files check to see which model you have, and if they dont match, it cancels installation...so you need to extract the drivers). If you need any help with this im happy to help.

 

Hi Wesmo, I saw your signature and I thought it's a misprint then it's occurred to me that you are in Scotland and I am in US and we have different model names - silly me

I do not have FW yet - I am exploring the possibility if I can run XP on it - it's absolutely necessary for me. Since you've done it then I (hopefully) can do it too. Now I need to decide on screen resolution between 1920x1080 and 1600x900.

Another possibility instead of dual boot is to use vaunted Windows XP Mode in Win 7, for that the Intel VT must enabled, which is disabled by SONY.

Thank you for offering help, I might scream for it when I get my FW.

 

Wesmo, another question. Did you get all XP drivers from Sony US website? Are they for VGN-FW190 model? - Thank you

 

Hi const451 - I didn't get all of my drivers from the sony US website but most of them (yes the FW190 i used). I had to use mobility modder to get my graphics card working properly, and my bluetooth took a little while to figure out, but i have got it all working now.
Yes, VT is initially disabled by sony, however, i believe its a fairly simple process to flash the bios and enable this feature. I haven't done it yet, but will be doing it fairly soon. In this respect, i haven't loaded the xp mode in my win7 yet, but once ive flashed the bios i will definately be adding this to the OS and putting it through its paces. To be honest, i doubt over time there will be many applications which i use which won't run in win7 automatically, but only time will tell.
Hope you decide to take the plunge and purchase an FW. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

I have one application - MATLAB - that I absolutely need but it does not completely support 64-bit.

Thank you, Wesmo, for info and your time.

 

oh yeah, ive heard of mat-lab, not really used it though. Yeah, i guess a virtual machine would be the best bet.

 

hi wesmo & const451,
u have ICQ or Yahoo ?, please send me, can u help me driver VGn FW373J for XP