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XP Pro Drivers For Toshiba Satellite M200 PSMC3A-04P008

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msw109

Technical User
Nov 9, 2009
2
GB
I bought a Toshiba Satellite M200 Model number PSMC3A-04P008 in Australia whilst travelling. Like lots of other people i have found Vista home basic a nightmare and have a copy of XP Pro ready to install onto it. However, I am not sure which drivers i need to run XP Pro when i have installed it, or even if there are drivers that are compatible with my machine. It was an ex-display model and came with little literature other than usual stuff and no cds as is common these days. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mick
 
1. Check out Toshiba's support site to see if they have anything that'll work for XP.

2. If you don't find all/any XP drivers there, then you can also let Windows Update get most/all of them for you. There's a decent chance it'll find at least some of the drivers.

3. You can also download one or a couple of the hardware info programs out there, so you can find out the very specifics of your hardware, and use that to search for the drivers:
Belarc Advisor
Lavalys Everest
CPUID PC Wizard

Take that info, and find your drivers form the individual chipset/component manufacturers...

For instance, you got an onboard nVidia graphics card, go to for the right drivers. If you've got an Intel chipset, network card, and/or graphics, go to If you can get the chipset drivers first, that may take care of some of the others... if not, keep looking, eliminating one at a time..

If you can't get anywhere with all of that, you can manually check one at a time in this way:
1. Go into Device Manager, right-click, properties for each device...

2. Then under one of the tabs - I think it's the driver tab or details tab... look for the PID..
3. There's at least one online place you can paste that code, and it'll tell you what you have...
4. of course you can paste them here as well, and someone will likely know/be able to find what your hardware is....

5. then you have to find the driver - if not found already.

But all in all, with a Toshiba laptop, you should be pretty safe finding drivers.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
Allow me to copy and paste from my reply to a very similar post, thus saving me typing effort:

Bummer. Guess you should have thought about the possibility of XP drivers not being available FIRST. I keep telling people that as time goes by, you can't just ASSUME that you can keep going back to XP. Hardware non-compatibility moving forward will be happening more often all the time. It really is time to start PLANNING for the demise of XP. Not necessarily doing it right now, but at least plan for it. Lecture is now over.

When you exhaust your search for unknown devices in Device Manager - do the following and maybe we can find some of them for you.
Go into device manager, Right click, properties of unknown devices, details tab and give us the PCI\Ven....................

string of data so we can look for the driver that way. Or, try googling that string.
 
goombawaho,

Your reply doesn't really fit.

The OP actually has NOT installed XP, according to his post. He is asking advice BEFORE going back to XP.

We can suggest other actions, of course, but it's not helpful to tell the guy "you should thought about the possibility... FIRST".

msw109,

I Can mention a couple other things as well...

1. Performance - if Vista's performance is the problem, then I'd suggest doing these first to make sure that Vista is the problem, and not something else:
1. RAM - You should have at least 2GB installed, if not, upgrade - RAM is cheap on modern hardware.
2. Bloatware - if this is a from the factory install, then it's got bloatware 99.9999% of the time. Remove the bloatware, and see the difference.
3. If you've got Norton/McAfee/Trend Micro installed from factory, remove it, and install Antivir or AVG or Avast for Antivirus, then Online Armor or Comodo Internet Security for firewall, and toss on Malwarebytes Antimalware and/or SuperAntiSpyware for good coverage on malware.
4. Since it's a laptop, check to see if it's a 4200, 5400, or 7200 RPMs. Also check the cache size. If it's less than 5400 RPM, and at least 8MB cache, then that's also a performance point - moreso than the OS.

Anyway, it's a lot to think about. Whatever you do is up to you, of course.

You could look at upgrading to Windows 7 as well, especially if that PC came with a free or discounted upgrade offer. It really is an amazing OS. Of course, I'd still recommend AT LEAST 2GB of RAM.


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
thanks guys, will back up everything and try all of your ideas and see what gives... are all you guys in the US or here in the UK?
 
Me - US

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
Yes, I did miss that he had not already installed, but my warning is still valid. His intention to upgrade could still to his downfall, so that's why I am strongly cautionary. There's too many of these threads in the last 6 months that don't end well.

You may be correct about "bloatware", RAM and anti-virus, but does the OP have the skills and/or patience to fix all that and increase Vista performance?? I don't know. That's another road to go down.

Let's see what he decides to do and then we can coach him either way. I personally just don't like Vista much. Even if it runs on a 10,000 rpm hard drive with 8GB of memory and stripped down to teh bone with no anti-virus.

I would be much more inclined to advise to wait 3 months and then move to Windows 7 after adding as much RAM as you can.
 
Windows 7 is definitely better. From what I've seen on many computers, I wouldn't recommend against Vista either. I've seen no valid arguments anymore of why to avoid it. Bad driver support - yeah, when first released. Now? No way! I've had more problems with XP and drivers than Vista of late. And besides that, Vista has a much better MS Update integration for looking for hardware drivers than XP ever did.

Anyhow, definitely up to the OP. If he wants to go XP, that's fine, but if he wants to try sticking with Vista, I know I'd totally support the decision.

By the way, if you want to remove a lot of the bloatware without having to take the time and sort it all out yourself, there is a freeware application available to do much of the work for you. I've not tried it, but reviews are good:

Oh, and I notice they built their web site on Drupal. I personally REALLY like Drupal from a web development standpoint, b/c I can do so much with so little time, yet if I want to (and get the time) I can do EVEN more!

Okay, not related to topic, but thought I'd toss that in, from seeing their website. [smile]

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
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