Installing Windows XP on an Acer Aspire 5517-5671

In my last post I ranted a bit on why Windows 7 is the worst OS of all time, to date. Now, I am going to walk you through my experience on installing Windows XP on my Acer Aspire 5517-5671.

• Backup anything you want to save to an external HD or internet/network location. Download and burn the files to a CD. (Here is the Manget URI for the second release of th drivers torrent – 100% complete all drivers for Windows XP 32 bit – magnet:?xt=urn:btih:O7KLNM3WM5MJSFHHUAT5J4B7DPFTQ6DM – You may need to add the tracker http://www.theghostbay.org:6969/announce of search http://www.TheGhostBay.Org ) (Do you need help with torrents? They are fast, convenient and secure!) You will need these drivers for your Acer Aspire 5517 to work properly with Windows XP. These drivers are for your wireless card, LAN / Ethernet, Video Adapter, Sound Card, USB etc etc. You may not be able to use a USB Flash drive because the PC will not be able to communicate to the USB drives upon a fresh install pre-SP1. Some work, and some dont.
• Shutdown/restart and press F2 to get into your bios.  On the “Main” tab / page, at the bottom, there is a setting called SATA Mode. Change it From AHCI Mode to IDE Mode. Important: If you don’t do this, you may get the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) while installing Windows XP. Don’t exit the BIOS yet, one more setting to change.
• Switch over to the “Boot” tab in the BIOS Screen. Use the plus and Minus (+ & -) keys to put the CD / DVD drive at the top (Mine was IDE1), and the Hard drive right below it (Mine was IDE0). Now place your Windows XP installation disk in your CD/DVD drive, then go to the exit tab in your bios and press enter on “Exit Saving Changes”. As the PC reboots, it should ask you to Press any key to boot from CD… go ahead and press the space bar to start the installer.
• If you do not want to use Windows 7 again the you can remove the extra partitions on your Hard drive, otherwise leave them be. Either way, you will not need them for Windows XP. I suggest creating a 10 GB partition that will be used for storing your drivers and misc software needed for reinstalling your OS. If you so choose to make an image/restore point for your newly installed OS you should also save it to this 6GB partition. Follow the Windows XP installer as usual. The next steps will take place after you have booted into your New Windows XP installation.
• Pop in that CD you burned at the beginning of this tutorial and copy all the files over to your desktop, then install each one. I tried to include all the drivers in this one release, I am not aware if I missed any. There are different variations of the same drivers too – You will have to check to see which ones you should use.
• Last but not least, after you install all your drivers and get it up to date with Windows updates, Anti-virus installed, your favorite programs installed, etc I suggest making an image of your OS. When your computer gives you trouble in the future you can restore from this point instead of jumping through all these hoops again.
• I personally have installed Windows XP on my new Acer Aspire 5517-5671 and have so far not found any issues with the XP OS on this PC.

I hope that someone out there who is as frustrated as I have been so far will find some comfort or relief from this.

Thoughts, comments, testimonials, successful/failed installations, other bug fixes related to this are welcome!

In case you missed the download link above for the torrent file for these drivers, you can download them from TheGhostBay.Org, or use a Magnet URI: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:O7KLNM3WM5MJSFHHUAT5J4B7DPFTQ6DM

If you use the Magnet URI you might need to add the following tracker: http://www.theghostbay.org:6969/announce

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Windows 7 (Seven), Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.