Dell Vostro 1700 from Vista To Windows XP

Just want to post so that people know it is possible to run Windows XP on a Vostro 1700 notebook, even though these computers are shipping with Vista only.

Let's gather all the device drivers first.

Only one driver comes from the support.dell.com Vostro 1700 Vista Drivers and Downloads section, and it is:

Modem, D330,HDA,MDC,v.92,modem

These are the drivers you will use from the Vostro 1700 Windows XP Drivers and Downloads section:

Quickset
Intel Mobile Chipset
Ricoh (this is IEEE 1394 driver)
If you have a WWAN card, you can find the
driver here.
Touchpad driver
Wired NIC
SATA controller

The rest we will borrow from the Vostro 1500 Windows XP Drivers and Downloads section (because the Vostro 1500 uses many of the same devices, and does ship with Windows XP):

Audio (STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio)
Video (if you're reading this you are probably interested in the nVidia - Drivers, GeForce 8400M or GeForce 8600M GT drivers - note, as of this writing, the drivers at nVidia.com do not work; they will not install).
Bluetooth

I had to pull the Dell 1390 Wireless card driver from another computer's download page (may have been the Latitude D820 or somesuch - it's easy to find).


First, if you attempt to install XP off the standard CD, you will get an error message that no hard drive was found. This is because the SATA controller is not, be default, one of the XP device drivers found on the CD. There are three options then:
The first two options are the smartest, and both require you obtain the SATA controller driver. This is found as one of the drivers available at support.dell.com, under Drivers and Downloads for your Vostro 1700, Windows XP - it's the one called SATA drives.
1) Press F6 when prompted to by the XP installation routine, and install the SATA controller driver from a floppy (a USB floppy, since the Vostros don't have a built-in floppy as an option). You will have placed the driver from above on the floppy first, of course.
2) Do what I did, which is to make the SATA controller driver part of the XP CD. Use a product called nlite, http://www.nliteos.com/, (make a donation for this great, free tool). This creates a bootable XP installation CD that incorporates the SATA driver that you've downloaded above.
3) Do what less tech-savvy people on these forums are doing, which is to disable SATA and enable ATA in the BIOS. You lose the benefits of SATA, but it is probably easier.

Once XP installs, FIRST install the Intel Mobile Chipset Driver. FIRST FIRST FIRST.

I would recommend then installing the video driver next, simply because the slow video response is a pain to work with. I would also highly recommend incorporating the practice of actually rebooting every time a device driver installation requests it. I know we normally move too quickly through that stuff, but here it may make a difference.

Note here that you have to install the audio driver before attempting to install the modem driver. Remember that modems modulate and demodulate, meaning to turn analog signals into bits and bytes, and in modern computers that process utilizes functionality provided by the audio device.
If you have any issues with the audio driver installation not providing audio functionality, use the Device Manager to locate a "broken" PCI device, and update the driver, pointing to the downloaded and unpacked audio driver from above (in the WDM folder).

You won't need any help throughout the rest of the installation process. Post back here if you need any help.