Hi,

I am re-installing Windows XP (SP3) on a friend's XPS M1530 and trying to find suitable drivers.  I downloaded the ones on Notebook Driver but am getting occasional freezes while Windows is booting.  He has also had similar problems in the past when using these drivers.  There are several threads about XP drivers for the XPS M1530 on this forum, but they all seem to be from 2008 and the links to the driver packs are dead.


Several sites claim to provide suitable drivers.  They fall into two groups , with identical drivers in each group:

1) odrivers, FileFobia, Notebook Drivers Download
The drivers on these sites come as self extracting archives and seem to be identical to the Vista drivers given on the Dell site.  Looking at them in detail some are compatible with XP (e.g. Chipset, AHCI) but others aren't (e.g. GeForce, Ethernet). 

2) Notebook Driver, DriversWiki
Many of these come as rar archives which seem to contain only the XP versions of the drivers.  Some of the drivers on these sites are newer than the XP compatible ones on the Dell site, e.g. Chipset (8.3.1.1009/8.2.0.1014), SATA AHCI (7.8.0.1012/7.5.0.1017). 

Also there is a much newer XP compatible version of the AHCI driver on the Intel site (9.6.0.1014), and when I ran an nVidia tool to check the graphics driver it found that the version installed was 174.31 but the latest compatible version is 307.83.  I was able to successfully install both of those without any apparent problems.


Why are many of the XP drivers on the Dell site not as up to date as those on manufacturers sites (Intel, nVidia) or other driver download sites (Notebook Driver).  Is it just that Dell hasn't validated them because it doesn't support XP on the M1530, or do the other sites release them without thorough testing?  Can newer versions of some drivers clash with older versions of others (e.g. AHCI vs Chipset)?

Similarly, why does Dell show some of it's drivers as only being compatible with Vista whereas other sites show them as being compatible with XP as well.  Have these other sites gone further than Dell and also tested them with XP?

When picking drivers is it better to go for the ones on the Dell site or more recent ones on other sites?
Do you know of any well tested driver packs for Windows XP on an  XPS M1530?


I realise that Windows XP is 3 generations old but would appreciate any help you can give.