DeVista-fying Gateway MT6458: Marvell TOPDOG driver??? 9

[wahnula]

Hello,

I am cross-posting this in the XP forum, I know we are not supposed to do this but I am desperate. This Gateway MT6458 (Turion TL50, ATI RS485M) notebook was purchased by a co-worker upon recommendation from a slimeball Best Buy salesman, who was told how it would be used, it was for his hospital-bound disabled wife. Asking a 100% competent person tho learn a new OS is hard enough; in her condition it would be a paperweight. Its "Vista Experience" was 2.1, I think. Woof.

I asked him to return it for an XP model, but he did not want to pay the 15% restocking fee, plus the salesman told him it would be fine by the end of the year...but he did not tell him his printer and scanner would not work with it nor that he could not join the company Domain with Vista Home...GRRRR

Anyway, I have done all the standard steps:

Index hardware
Clone Vista drive
Load XP
Hunt-and-peck for drivers

I have done this several times with Gateway and others with excellent results, but I have found a nut I cannot crack: The built-in wireless NIC, a Marvell TOPDOG PCI-Express 802.11n Wireless Adapter [EC85]

I thought I had hit paydirt at the Marvell site that had an XP driver for the TOPDOG, but all it did within XP was identify the device, and Windows noted it would not work properly. "Wireless Network Connection" does not appear in Network Connections. Device Manager reports it as "Marvell TOPDOG PCI-Express 802.11abgn Wireless" but it still has the yellow !. The other PCI-E device, the Marvel Yukon NIC, is working fine, so I doubt it is a bus issue. There are no other !s in Device Manager and I must say it is a peppy PC w/ XP, with Vista it was a DOG, and not a topdog!

I have also tried every wireless adapter driver on Gateway's site, Realtek, Broadcom, as well as tried to run the Vista driver. No joy.

Thanks folks.

Tony

 

[wahnula]

tmckinneyebony:

If it's the exact same model Gateway, try this:

http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverSearchResults.do

It's a new product so I would try the 2007 dated drivers. I did not save all the links or drivers from my mission, except on the Gateway I repaired. Maybe I should put them on a CD and sell it online

Note to Microsoft: can you hear us now???

Tony

 

[mocars2]

tmckinneyebony: just to be clear - what model do you have and did Tony's suggestion work for you?

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear Tony,
Thanks for the info... I will try that site and drivers.

mocars2...my Gateway model number is MT6458

God Bless,
Tom

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear Tony and others,
I forgot to mention. I am not talking about the wireless LAN card unless the cable plug in is on the same card.

In control panel it tells me I need a driver for the Ethernet controller.

Tom

 

[wahnula]

Go to

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=MX3702+&st=kw

Search "Yukon"

Try them all.
Tony

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear Tony,
I followed the instructions and I can now connect to the internet but in Control Panel I still show a driver needed for one Ethernet Controller instead of two and a PCI device. I have no sound. I presume that is the PCI device.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

 

[wahnula]

Great. Now go to the same search site and search for:

SigmaTel

Try the first one from 5/2007. It will have a "Setup" icon if I remember correctly. The other Ethernt controller is the wireless device. You have two options as of today: Disable the device or replace it with one that has an XP driver available, like the Intel above.

Tony

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear Tony,

Many, Many, Many thanks. We are up and running except the wireless.

Perhaps you should make a cd I did but I dont have time to sell it.

Let me know if Marvell does come up with a driver for Topdog.

God Bless,
Tom

 

[wahnula]

Tom,

Great news. You know, you can get a plug-in wireless card for the external slot, but with an internal solution available for less than $50 I would think that would be the way to go. Since this project is over for me, I doubt I will continue my search for XP drivers for the TopDog. Marvell's phone number (given me by Gateway) is 408-222-2500, maybe you will have better luck with them than I did.

Tony

 

[mocars2]

tmckinneyebony
What and where did you get the video? was the Catalyst with it- is that just a useless utility? Did you back up drive D and just make 1 partition for the xp or what?
thanks Chuck

 

[wahnula]

Go to :

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=MX3702+&st=kw

And search for "Radeon". It's the second one down, better than the ATI version as it has the native resolution embedded.

Tony

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear mocars2,

See Tony's post...but in regard to the hard drive...I left the D partition on the drive and formated and installed XP on C. Before I did anything I made a recovery disk for Vista and an Image disk just in case my friend wanted to go back to Vista. Then I also did a recovery backup on D....

Hope that helps...


God Bless,
Tom

 

[wahnula]

My tack was a little different...I cloned the drive, then nuked it with dban:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Then started fresh. Since the drive was for a novice user I left the entire 160GB as a single-partition boot drive. The laptop came with a Vista OS disk, the "recovery" partition is just all the added Gateway trial bloatware. 9GB is a little puny for an OS/APPS partition in my book. And don't worry, you won't want to be bringing Vista back...not with a 2.1 "Vista Experience Index".

Tony

 

[tmckinneyebony]

Dear Tony,

Perhaps you are right. I would not want to bring Vista back.

However, my friend just may change his mind so I was watching my back door. He will probably never use that huge drive anyway.

You mentioned the 2.1 "Vista Experience Index". I live in Belize and my friend had a friend pick up the laptop for him. I guess that Vista is all you can get now.

XP is sure not perfect but I guess I am used to it.

Thanks again for all the info.

God Bless,
Tom

 

[kmcferrin]

And don't worry, you won't want to be bringing Vista back...not with a 2.1 "Vista Experience Index".

In my experience, the Vista Experience Index is a poor way to rate a system. The overall score for the VEI is always the lowest score of the individual components. You could have a PC that scores over a 5 on every subcategory, but if it gets a 2.1 in one of the categories then the overall score is a 2.1. In order to get a feeling for a PCs true potential you need to look at each of the subscores.

Having only 1GB of memory (as does the MT6458) will cause a very low memory score. But you can always add more memory, and most people do at some point. The only things that I would be particularly worried about on a laptop (related to the Vista Experience Index) would be the CPU and the video chipset, because those are hard (or impossible) to change out. Any modern dual core CPU is going to score well on the CPU, so no worries there.

The integrated Radeon 1150 graphics aren't bad. In fact, they perform much better than Intel's integrated graphics solution on benchmarks. But for some reason, I've noticed that the VEI scores for graphics tend to be higher on the Intel GMA960 systems than on the Radeon Xpress 1150 systems. After doing a little digging, I have discovered that one of the key factors that goes into generating the VEI score for the graphics chipset is the amount of memory that the graphics card/chipset has. And apparently, by default, the Intel chipset grabs more system (shared) memory for graphics than the ATI chipset does, though that is something that can usually be configured in the BIOS or the graphics utilities. So once again the VEI becomes misleading, because a much slower video chipset could score as well as, or possible better than, and much faster chipset if it has more RAM associated with it.

So in summary, ignore the Vista Experience Index if you intend to run Vista. The rules of what makes a fast system haven't changed significantly between XP and Vista. Microsoft just wants you to think that they did.

 

[wahnula]

Well let's put it this way: With Vista running it's a dog w/ Fleas. Can't even navigate the system without horrible lag. Getting to Device Manager was a chore even without all the nag screens.

Now with XP it moves right along, enough to be a little heater with the wind blowing out the cooling hole...TurionX2 is a HOT CPU!!!

Granted the VEI can rise with more RAM (I forget the low component), but how many Joe or Jane users are going to do this? People want machines that WORK, not offer excuses that you cannot do this and sorry that's not compatible. We have three examples, on this forum, in one week, of the failure of this machine to do its basic job, plus it's loaded w/shovelware.

I am sure Vista will rise to replace XP, but it's just plain not ready yet. And that font!!! I can tell by every email received from Windows Mail, it has the default Windows font, and I have trouble reading it. It's even unclear in their ads. Too much to fix for me. I'm letting my Vista Ultimate rot in its drive bay for now.

For now I hope this post helps those upon whom Best Buy dumped these clams.

Tony

 

[mocars2]

TOM & TONY and the rest of the gang -
THANK YOU.

I've got XP up and running on the mt6456 without the wireless of course. I did try putting in go back that I've used alot and really like it since it's saved me a few times and this is the 1st time I've had a problem with it and XP. I've read alot yesterday of folks having a devil of a time with it and XP but in about 6 times putting it on machines - it's alway worked for me, except last night. It would go into a loop at start up just as the windows XP with the scrolling lights and would jump to back and restart. I had to throw in rollback RX but it doesn't seem as good as go back when it's working well. And somehow when goback screwed up and I had to reinstall XP - somehow one time the D: drive that I was saving with the drivers incase I wanted to go to Vista - just disapeared when I got the the partition part of the install - so it's gone and everything's on C - not a big deal, infact it's probably better but you guys know what I mean when I want to do 1 thing and you're forced to do another.

Again I must say that the wireless card - Marvell was not too impressive on pulling in a strong signal. Did the replacement card that some have used seem better????
Thanks again

 

[Freestone]

mocars2 - just a quick post to let you know anytime you use GoBack on a partition then reinstall the OS, that partition will not show up until GoBack is reinstalled or GoBack's changes are removed. Many posts to these forums have been made by users of GoBack who've "lost" partitions aftter an OS reinstall.

 

[mocars2]

Freestone - thanks for your post. Since I got in a loop right after I installed it - I couldn't uninstall because I could never get windows to open - so I reinstalled windows and that's when the other partitiion disappeared.

 

[Freestone]

The partition "disappeared" because GoBack had made the change to the partition type in the drive's partition table even though it didn't install correctly. Windows doesn't understand that partition type (hex 44) without GoBack support, so it makes one think the partition is gone.