Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Installing Windows XP on an Acer Aspire 4710
Michelle has an Acer Aspire Gemstone 4710 notebook. It comes with a pre-installed Microsoft Windows Vista Home Operating System which I am not quite fond of. So I convinced her that I reformat the notebook and downgrade the operating system to Microsoft Windows XP SP2. Being the persistent person that I am, she agreed.
Before I started, I made sure that I had the necessary recovery DVDs for the Acer Aspire 4710 in case anything goes wrong. With everything ready, I switched the notebook on, pressed F2 to enter setup, changed the boot priority to the optical drive, popped the Microsoft Windows XP SP2 CD in the drive, saved settings and rebooted.
The notebook booted up using the CD and initialized all the necessary drivers it needed for the installation. Everything was going well until it showed up a page that says it can’t detect the hard drive. This got me stunned for a while until I remembered that the Acer Aspire 4710 used a SATA drive which can’t be detected by the original Microsoft Windows XP SP2 installation CD. So I tinkered a little bit here and there and found 3 ways to install XP on this machine.
For those who would also like to install Microsoft Windows XP on their Acer Aspire 4710, here are guides for the 3 methods that you can use.
Guide to Installing Microsoft Windows XP on an Acer Aspire 4710
I highly suggest that you read this guide one step at a time to avoid any errors.
1. Make sure that you have the Acer Aspire 4710 model. Although these methods, in theory, may work on other notebooks, I have only personally tried it on a 4710.
2. Download all the drivers that the notebook’s hardware will need. Windows XP does not have support for most of the 4710’s hardware. You can download the drivers here Acer Philippines Incorporated. Download the drivers from the Chipset Driver all the way to the AHCI Driver. Save it to a Flash Disk or any medium of storage (CD/DVD).
3. Switch the notebook on and press F2 to enter the BIOS setup page. Go to the MAIN page and see if there is an option there that would let you change the interface of your hard disk from SATA to IDE and vice-versa. If you have this option then do the following:
- Change SATA to IDE
- Change boot priority to Optical Drive
- Insert the Windows XP CD
- Save Settings
- Reboot
Once the text "Press any key to Boot CD…" comes up, press any key and you are all set to install Windows XP. This is Method #1.
4. If you do not have the option of changing SATA to IDE, you have two more options to choose from:
Method #2: The Quick Yet Riskier Way
I dubbed this "quick yet riskier way" since this method requires flashing the BIOS of your notebook. Once you successfully flash the BIOS, you can instantly use Method #1. If you choose to do this method, you can download the BIOS here. Try this method at your own risk ^^
Method #3: Slowly But Surely
Method #3 will take quite some of your time but you are guaranteed that nothing damaging will happen to your notebook. This method requires you to download and install nLite and the .NET Framework Version 2.0. You will also need the SATA drivers which you can download here. Last but not the least, prepare a blank CD-R or CD-RW.
- Install .Net Framework Version 2.0 then install nLite.
- Unpack the SATA Driver and keep it in a folder that you choose.
- Insert your Windows XP CD and copy all of its contents in a folder in your hard drive.
- Open nLite. You will see the Welcome Page. Choose your language and click on the NEXT button.
- On the next page you will be asked for the location of your Windows XP installation files. Click on Browse and choose the folder to where you copied the files from the XP CD. It will check all the files and if everything goes well, you may click on NEXT.
- You will then be brought to a page where you can choose to load a preset. Since this is your first time to use nLite, you will not see any available presets so just click on the NEXT button.
- A page similar to this will open. Click on Integrate Drivers and Create A Bootable ISO then click NEXT.
- You will be brought to a page that will let you choose the drivers you would like to integrate. Click on the INSERT button, select SINGLE DRIVER and open the folder where you extracted the SATA driver. Choose the file "iaahci,inf" and click OPEN. On that page, TEXT MODE should be selected and under "Text Mode integration options" select everything. Then click the OK button and click on NEXT.
- A window will pop up asking "Do you want to start the process?" click on YES. It will process all the files and after that you may click on the NEXT button.
- You will be brought to a page where you can either create an ISO file or burn a CD. Under MODE choose Direct Burn. Under LABEL put any name you want. Under BURN SPEED choose the lowest speed possible. Pop in the blank CD-R or CD-RW and click on BURN.
- After it finishes burning the CD, you can now reboot, press F2 to enter BIOS setup, change boot priority to optical drive, save settings then reboot again. Once the notebook boots up using the CD, you can now normally install Windows XP since your new installation CD will detect the SATA drive. This CD, I think, can also be used for notebooks other than the Acer Aspire 4710.
End of Guide
I hope this guide helped you. If you have any other questions, do not hesitate to ask. I will help you in any way I can.
P.S. Once you finish installing Windows XP, install all the drivers that you downloaded.
P.S.S. The Audio drivers won’t work unless you also install the modem drivers.
Share this post :
on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 8:55 pm:
ok kaayo ah!!! based on trail and error jud bai thats how we learn… most of the time
Lazy Goy reply on February 25th, 2008:
i couldn’t have said it any better ^^
on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm:
gigoy way lingaw!!! hahahahahaha
on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 4:02 am:
thank’s…