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XP Drivers for a Gateway w/Vista? 11

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Allen455

Allen455

Technical User
Jan 18, 2007
11
US
Hi,
I have a Gateway MT3705 laptop, purchased yesterday at Best Buy, which came with Vista preloaded. I played around with it a lot yesterday, but I came to the conclusion that Vista just isn't solid enough for my needs yet (though the eye candy is definitely cool!).

So I want to go back to XP Pro, but I can't find the right XP drivers for many of the devices, as Gateway seems to only support Vista for their new models. Argh.

The video issue is easy enough, and I got ATI Catalyst drivers for the xpress 200m inside.

But beyond that, this is proving to be a real headache. I still need drivers for my modem, sound card, ethernet, and wifi controllers. There's an integrated media card reader that would be nice to get working, too...

Does anybody have ideas on how I could track these down, given the lack of drivers on the Gateway website?

This page has a list of the components and part numbers and stuff, but it's all integrated chips and stuff, so I can't download the drivers from the manufacturers' own sites.

Any ideas would be really welcomed!

Oh, one idea I had is that if there are similar models that were released like last month, but with XP instead of Vista, their support pages should have the proper drivers... anyone know such model numbers?

Thanks a ton!
Allen
 
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I have the same laptop and I have all drivers working except Sound. I will help you if you help me? You got sound working yet? I know it is a Sigmatel 9220 but I have yet to get one of the drivers working on it.
 
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What if you were to use System Restore to get the machine back to the condition before you started to make major changes to the drivers or installed programs.

Enable the built-in Administrator from Local Users and Groups. Use that to Delete any Users you have created.

Return the Laptop to the store for refund or replacement with something that is loaded with XP?

Have you checked the store's refund policy or Warranty obligations?


The above sites may help with drivers, if the hardware manufacturers cannot.

This free program is handy to see what software or hardware is installed currently on any machine.

Belarc Advisor.
 
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Hey man, I feel ya, i just typed a big letter in another forum, so forgive me for some cut and paste action to get the word out on this deelimma.

And I Qoute;

Mother of peril. .... trying to get this thing rolled back to XP over the last few days has not been a treat.

The XP drivers for the wirelesscard are the same Realtek wireless network adapter drivers a majority of other gateway M class/series laptops using XP would have. The ''track pad' works automaticly, as does the graphics card... but when you try to isntall the XP ATI drivers it always says "unknown card" or something like that. I wish those drivers came via some sort of driver file rather than an exe .... ..

A list of unknown "installed hardware" is as follows :

#1 Ethernet Controller (I'm guessing this is like the CAT-5 100/1000mb but since I've gone wireless I don't exactly worry about this finding this driver though it would be nice to have just in case.)

#2 Video Controller (it says VGA compatible, and I find it odd that it works fine at 1024*768 32bit, w/o knowing what the hell kinda gpu it is, and also lets me dedicate over 200mb of ram to it* and it tells me it takes no resources as it is not properly installed, though task manager shows the differance in ram)
*bios tweak for anyone who goes "nu-uh" or whathave you, i guess when you dedicate 128, it still self dedicates 64mb to it, or some shit like that. got me, but it's more than just 128 dedicated to it, and it said it in vista also. Which should be pretty nice w/ xp and older games!

#3 PCI Device (I have no idea what this is, the sound card doesn't work at all though it says i have an audio device and legacy audio drivers. So it might be the sound card... but thinking about it I'm sure it's an 'intigrated' SC... which got me if that would be considered a CPI device.. and why the hell doesn't work then?? anyways, i guess it could be the 4 card reader on the side.. hell it could be the DVD player COULD BE ANYTHING?!?

#4 SM Bus Controller (Interesting one! I beleive applied the driver for a generic Card Reader driver that install of windows XP never worked again. Soooo it maybe for the ram or something, maybe duel processors? GOT ME! Just don't go messing with it unless you know what it is, or you are ready to reinstall that windows XP and start all over again... Though I didn't try "fixing" windows instalation or whatever. Shit never works for me so i just started over.



But thats all I know about the drivers thus far. I imagen that if I could get a specific list of what the hardware is in this computer, finding XP drivers shouldn't be all to hard.

I've already formated to XP... So I can't run any system information programs that will acuratily tell me what the hell is under the hood.

Feel free to help us windows XP wanting sons of guns out. Tell me/us what you know, help a brotha out.

Feeling board? Download a progam I recommend for any hardware computer questions you may have about your own computer called AIDA32, it's a free Non-threatining system information gatherer... thing.. trust me, I keep it on a little disc of freebee stuff I use to work on other peoples computers...
Download @
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/AIDA.shtml

anywaysss...

Tell me what the hell you have under the hood, I'm no pro or anything, but feel free to run that program if you have this laptop; the gateway MT3705 and see if you can crack the code of getting XP drivers. If I could dip you and your loved ones in gold and shower you with lavish gifts to help I would. Said you, you just get street creed and bragging rights.

Lets do it team.
 
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Thanks for the advice!
Rubican, I was about to refer you to the Slickdeals discussion about this laptop, but then I saw you were already there :)

I reinstalled Vista from the included disc, and it's definitely a lot faster without all the Gateway stuff clogging it up... I can't really deal with a lot of computer downtime right now (I bought this laptop to replace a suddenly broken one, so it's my primary pc), so I'm going to stick with Vista for the time being...

I'll keep an eye out as I'm still quite interested in leaving Vista for XP. Yesterday I tried to play a DVD and WMP told me there's a copy protection error between my video card and my display... this is a Netflix dvd! Luckily dvds seem to play fine through Nero Showtime, so I can live with that, though it's definitely aggravating.

Anyway, good luck!
 
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I managed to get all the drivers except for the Media Card Reader.

I used the Omega Radeon drivers for the Video Card.
I used the Sigmatel 9200 drivers from Gateway for a diff. model pc.

For the Wired NIC I used the Marvell Yukon drivers.

For the Wireless NIC I used the RealTek 8185

I hope this helps if you want to go back to XP.
 
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Wow Kloud, that's awesome! How is the laptop with XP? Does it feel significantly faster?

I have to admit I'm a bit conflicted, and for such shallow reasons... Vista is undeniably cool looking, and I'll miss stuff like the new search, but I can't really argue with the stability and speed of XP, either. Hmm...

Anyway, that's great work for sure! Thanks again.

Allen
 
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The speed seems good. A bit faster than Vista, probably because it doesn't work the GPU as hard. I actually set this up as a dual boot machine. I need XP at work to join a domain and for incompatible software, so finding the drivers wasn't an option. It is also nice to be able to switch back to Vista if I want to use the Media Card slot.

If you take the dual boot route, make sure you install XP before Vista, otherwise its a huge pain to fix the boot configuration.

I hope this helps. If you have any other questions I will monitor this page for a few more days.
 
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Okay, I have all the correct drivers now, no more 3rd party solutions. If you want I will zip them up nice and put them on my website to download. Email me at: xzxkloudxzx at hotmail dot com
 
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This is an opportune time to mention a "by design bug" included in Vista, when used in a dual boot situation. Vista will lose all saved System Restore points every time you boot into another operating system. It is something to do with Vista being unable to validate the consistency of the drive if XP (which it does) or another operating system (which might) writes to a drive monitored by Vista.

Something to be aware of, and then you can adjust any recovery plan accordingly.
 
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Just so you know you guys made me sign up to reply to you and this is probably going to be my only post...

Windows XP drivers:

How? After rongfully searching all sorts of ways i noticed that on the download page for mt3705, had 3 laptops listed for the bios it was campatible with. Then search keyword MX3702 as it was one of the compatible ones.

All drivers work and everything is functional now as far as i know. Enjoy.
 
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I want you that you made me sign up to thank you.

I am working on one of these laptops for a friend. They can't use Vista due to incompatabilities with some of the software their employer uses.

I called Gateway. I was pleasently surprised w/ the short call wait, highly disappointed with being put on hold for 10 mins then told that they couldn't direct me to the drivers.

Even after telling them I knew the machine had been sold w/ XP installed just 3 weeks ago, and threatening to return it, they would not relent.

Thanks for the link, you saved me a TON of hassle!
 
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I'm having the same problem with a Gateway GT5405E desktop my company got last week. We had to ditch Vista because our software won't work with it. Now I'm trying to track down the right drivers for XP.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong area of Gateway's website, but the only drivers I can find are for Vista.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!

(Um...hope it's okay to post this here. I wasn't sure if I should start a new thread or not for my similiar dilemma.)
 
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Thanks! I knew you guys would be able to help me out. You guys are awesome.
 
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Thanks too from me, I'm writing to you from my Gateway on XP that now works right...save for one hitch, so far:

I have a Gateway MT6456, and the wifi device is Marvell TopDog. Does anyone have a lead for an XP driver for that? I suspect I'm out of luck with this one, but I have to ask.

Thanks again! I genuinely like Vista, it just...doesn't work right.
 
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Thanks to you all for this thread. I too have had the Vista pains and decided to go back to XP. I have a Gateway laptop serial# MT6451 that i bought at best buy. I have succesfully downloaded most of the drivers except for the Mass Storage Controller and the Modem Device on High SPeed Audio Bus drivers. Anyone else have luck with these? I've looked on the Gateway site and they only seem to have the modem device driver for Vista. The downloaded the Sigmatel 9200 driver for my audio (which works) but now no modem. The modem is a 56K ITU V.92 ready fax/modem (RJ-11 port). Is there a standard driver i could use for this?

thanks
TerpTech2007
 
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