The Dell Community has contributed: 9483 ideas | promoted 648654 times | 72899 comments

How IdeaStorm Works:

Post Promote Discuss See
XPS products Comments | XPS products Ideas
190

XP Offered to XPS420 Customers

190 points posted to XPS products by maddog Apr 30

Dell owes XPS 420 customers an apology and the option to purchase at reduced cost (better yet FREE) XP Pro, XP Media Center, XP Home WITH ALL drivers for installation on XPS 420 systems! I’ll gladly return my Vista disks for XP any day. I’ve learned to hate Vista with a passion I cannot express in a public forum. It’s the biggest joke Microsoft has played on its customers since Windows ME.

I recently purchased an XPS420 with Vista Home Premium. I was told by the sales person that XP was not available and would not work with this particular model. I had the system up and running XP Pro within 6 hours including hunting down drivers which was not easy. The only drivers that I haven’t been able to locate is for the Blue Tooth package (19 in 1 card reader). Some of the drivers came from the Vista Resource disk, some from the XPS210 drivers page, video card drivers from the manufacturer, and NIC from the internet using find drivers option. It feels like the system has doubled in speed and I’ve gained about 10 additional gigabytes in drive space over Vista. I’m a happy dude now BUT very disappointed in Dell for this deception. Still beats HP thought . . .

stormrider451
Apr 30		 I agree. I would change my M1730 to XP. Im having a lot of performance problems in games with it.. This shouldnt be happening in a 3000 dollar computer. Please do this DELL.. MS is already working on their next OS, this Vista is a joke. What are we to do? Wait 2 years till they bring out the next OS?! And live with these gaming performance problems?!
fargo
Apr 30		 I agree %100 but even with xp pro available for the xps 420 it stil leaves a major problem of a less than
proper PSU to handle high end graphics cards such as the 8800 ultra and the ones being released now.
you have to spend $2000+ to get dell to install a 425w psu which in my mind is very resrictive.
winoffice
Apr 30		 That's bashing Vista...DEMOTED.
toyota_supra
Apr 30		 winoffice: That's bashing Vista...DEMOTED.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Since when telling the truth is bashing? What happened to a freedom of speech so cherished in US of A?

This political correctness and portraying everything in positive light got this country in a mess that we are in right now!

Regards,
T.S.
winoffice
Apr 30		 toyota_supra: First, it is not the truth. Second, even if it were the truth, it still is bashing. Third, what are all of those dollar signs for??
toyota_supra
May 1		 Winoffice,

I beg to differ.
My opinion is based on my own experience, which is shared by thousands of computer users worldwide.

My laptop is setup for dual boot: XP Professional and Vista Home Premium. Guess which OS I'm using 99% of the time? You guessed right - Windows XP. It boots up faster, it opens applications and files faster, it uses less resources and the list goes on. Vista is just a pretty face with ugly underpinnings!

Specs for my laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM memory, 200 GB Hard Drive.

Regards,
T.S.
toyota_supra
May 1		 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

... and the dollar signs are for Micro$oft, for forcing people to by an inferior Operating System.
leipzig
May 6		 Whenever I've tried to install WindowsXP on my XPS420, I get a 'Blue Screen of Death' when the install gets to "Starting Windows". Has anyone a cure for this? What is the secret to installing WindowsXP on my machine?
Regards,
Leipzig
toyota_supra
May 6		 Leipzig,

Vista comes with native SATA hard drive support, and XP doesn't. To fix this:

On bootup, enter the BIOS and disable native SATA support. WinXP will be able to read the hard drive. You can run WinXP with it disabled now.

However, to use SATA support, you will need your hard drive's controller driver. The driver must be made into the Windows XP installation disk, so you will need to rip, edit, and burn the installation disc. For instructions on how to do this, see http://www.powerdonkey.net/windows/x...ver_update.php

Some of the many guides related to this topic:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/558994-how-install-xp-after-vista.html

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__t...

Regards,
T.S.
leipzig
May 7		 Hi toyota_supra,
I've tried your first suggestion, but that didn't work because I have pretty new BIOS and it has no choice for disabling the native SATA support. I only have two choices concerning SATA. Either ON or OFF per drive and RAID ON or AUTO. Neither of these worked for me. I will try your other suggestions ASAP.
A while back, I tried using a VM program and it worked, but it would not recognize my four processors in my Core2 Quad Q6600. It only recognized one core and therefore was pretty slow.f your other suggestions don't work out for me either, I may just have to wait for Windows7.
Thanks,
Leipzig
leipzig
May 15		 toyota_supra,

Can you please tell me what version of the BIOS you have on your Dell XPS420? I have version 04, which doesn't allow me to turn off the SATA support. If you have an earlier version that has this feature, is it possible to install that version (installing an earlier version) on my PC?

Regards,
Leipzig
leipzig
May 16		 maddog,

Can you please tell me what the version of BIOS is on your XPS420? I would love to have WindowsXP on my XPS420, but mine won't allow me to disable the SATA.
regards,
leipzig
leipzig
Jun 11		 I finally figured out what the problem was with my XPS420 conversion from Vista to XP. I was using an old WindowsXP Pro Upgrade (pre-SP2). Once I used the newer XP Pro Upgrade with SP2, all went well. I'm a 'happy camper' now!!
leipzig
Jun 17		 Although I was able to get WindowsXP Pro loaded (and working), there were several other 'issues' that made me think that this really isn't worth it. I had to go into the BIOS to change the RAID settings whenever I wanted to boot into XP. If I wanted to boot to my other hard drive (VISTA), I had to go back into the BIOS and change the RAID settings.

Also, WindowsXP took much longer to boot up than Vista. This is probably a driver issue, but I feel this takes the fun out of it. If anyone has any good suggestions, please let me know.
ozcaferacer
Jun 25		 I couldn't agree with maddog more! Two months ago I bought a new XPS 420, with Vista, in the hope that I would get a reliable, useable PC. It has been far from it. I have had not one single solitary day without problems.
The Dell service people have been as helpful as they can be, after spending over 6 hours on the phone to them, and have even replaced the motherboard. Now, Dells idea of everything working well is a machine that has one USB port working, will not recognise external hard drives, will not recgonise external multi media devices, and the list grows and changes daily.
Either Dell or MS or both should hang their heads in shame for being associated with a product that is not fit for use.
I would love to "upgrade" to XP but unfortunately I am not as savvy as most of the people in this thread appear to be and fear that I could end up worse off.
One more phone call to Dell and then it's off to the Australian Consumer Association for some commercial justice.
Please log in to post a comment
recently promoted by: