Installing Windows XP on Dell Inspiron N5010 Laptop

Hello everybody;

Below I tried to illustrate all the necessary actions that are needed to be taken to install XP on a N5010 laptop. I hope this helps:

1- Installation of XP itself:

You need an AHCI slipstreamed XP CD to install. You can also change the SATA Mode in the BIOS to ATA to use a CD without AHCI drivers but not recommended becasue it takes you two hours to install and once installed, the performance is like 486! I dont waste time to explain how to slipstream AHCI drivers to XP CDROM because it has been already explained in many posts.

2- Gathering and installation of the drivers:

A. Chipset Drivers from HERE. Reboot after installation.

B. Rapid Storage Controller from HERE. Reboot after installation. (Do not Miss it, very important. It has a  great effect on your hard disk and total system performance)

C. Intel Management from HERE. Reboot after installation.

D. Intel Graphics from HERE. Reboot after installation.

E. ATI drivers from HERE. This damn driver is too hard to install! It does not work automatically! Follow below instructions to install it (if you have intel graphics and already isntalled its driver, you wont need this driver at all):

- Extract the file. Do not try to install it, just extract to somewhere and remember the path!

- Go to the device manager and right-click on Video Controller and then: Update Driver...=> No, not this time => Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) => Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.

- Choose "Display adapters" from the list appeared and click Next.

- Choose "Have Disk" and then press "Browse".

- The driver path is cx420_avga... => 8.723-100406a... => Packages => Drivers => Display => XP_INF

- Press "Open" and the press "OK". You will see a list of ATI drivers.

- Scroll down until you see "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470". There are 3 drivers for 5470, you choose the last one becasue the others do NOT work.

- You will see an "Update Driver Warning" message, press "Yes" and continue. Then you will see a "Hardware Installation" message, press "Continue Anyway" and go on.

- Your ATI graphics driver is installed now, but you need to change the resolution manually becasue the ATI Catalyst software is not installed and cant be installed (at least I couldnt install!)

F. Sound driver from HERE. (Thanks to jijojosephk who finally found the AUDIO driver for n5010)

G. Now you need to install the HDMI Audio driver that is included in VGA drivers. Look at the Other devices in device manager and you can see "Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus" although you installed the sound drivers, well, this is HDMI Audio. Right clik on it and choose update driver.

- Follow these steps: No, not this time => Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) => Include this location in the search => Browse

- The driver path is cx420_avga... => 8.723-100406a... => Packages => Drivers => WDM => HDMI => XP

- Press OK and then Next and you are done.

H. LAN driver from HERE. (In my case, it was RealTek NIC driver)

Note: After you install this driver, the LAN device will disappear from your hardware list. Do not worry, it appears whenever a LAN cable is plugged to your laptop!!!

I. WLAN driver from HERE. This one is also damn hard. Mine was Broadcom and could installed only with below instruction. If yours is different you may find it easier to install. Follow below instructions for Broadcom WLAN:

- Excute the file. It will extrant itself to C:\swsetup\SP47152

- Go to device manager and right-click on "Network Controller" and then: Update Driver...=> No, not this time => Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) => Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.

- Choose "Network adapters" from the list appeared and click Next.

- Choose "Have Disk" and then press "Browse".

- The driver path is C:\swsetup\SP47152.

- Press "Open" and then "OK" and you will see a list of Broadcom WLAN drivers.

- Choose the 1st one that reads "Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n" and press Next.

- You will see a "Update Driver Warning" message, press "Yes" and you are done!

I hope the above can help all of the XP lovers to install their favorite OS on their N5010 laptops. I really enjoyed the smoothness and performance of XP on Quad Core processors despite all the negative things somebody say about XP on new laptop models.

Pouria