Hi everyone, im new to this forum so if im posting in the wrong place i do apologise. Iv been searching the internet for a couple of days now just to find drivers but im having no luck. Iv just bought a Acer Aspire T180-BE7H from a friend and its currently running Windows Vista Home 64 Bit. I hate Vista with a passion and want it off. Iv aquired a Windows XP 64 Bit Installation disc but can not find any drivers for it. On the website only 32 bit drivers are available. Does anyone know where i may be able to find the 64 bit drivers? Im also told that (not sure if its true or not) that XP doesnt like any more than 3.5 GB Ram. I already have 3 GB Ram and wish to put 4 GB of Ram in (Max upgrade for Motherboard). Will Windows XP 64 Bit recognize/utilize the full 4 GB? (Taken From Device Manager) Acer Aspire T180-BE7H AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ (2.6 Ghz) 3.00 GB Ram Nvidia GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS Realtech High Definition Audio Marvell Yokon 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller Thanx
Is there a reason why you need to use XP 64bit? It is one of the least supported Windows, so finding drivers for it is almost impossible. "XP doesnt like any more than 3.5 GB Ram" is correct if you are talking about 32bit. The only good reason to move to 64bit is for the more than 4GB RAM support. Since you are not using 4GB RAM right now, stick to 32bit.
Hi Durks, It looks like your Acer Aspire notebook is using the NVIDIA nForce 430 chipset, so you can download the latest 64-bit driver for the chipset @ NVIDIA DRIVERS 15.26WHQL, or Drivers | GeForce Chai is correct about going to 64-bit to support more memory. This is necessary if you want to access all 4 GB of your system memory, should you choose to upgrade to 4 GB. But if you don't intend to upgrade to 4 GB, you might as well stick to 32-bit. Hope that helps you some!
Thanx for the quick response guys I am more accustomed to windows XP over any other OS and its relatively small compared to the newer operating systems. I don't need all the security crap or the flashy looking graphics that comes with Vista, Win7 or Win8. Iv never cared for it. Its so easy to strip XP right down to its core. With this computer i plan to to use it only for editing home footage on AVS (which again is small program but does everything i need it to). It wont even be going on the internet. Its sole purpose will be for video editing. Once i find the drivers (if they do exist) i plan to install Windows XP 64bit and fit the maximum amount of ram possible for the computer. With Editing, every last bit of ram helps. For the full 4GB to be available IM going to have to use a 64 bit OS. Its not a notebook bud, its a desktop. Do they use the same drivers?
LOL, I don't recall saying anything about the laptop until I noticed that that was posted by Adrian... I know that Windows XP is fine, but there's really no reason to move to 64bit, you may face more issues than you think, in terms of comparability. You have to worry about the lack of drivers, software that may not work properly. If I were you, I would still stick to 32bit XP, even if I upgraded to 4GB RAM. It is also fairly easy to strip down Vista or Win 7 to its core since it's easy to change to Win2k theme. Win8 is a completely different story, which is why I have not migrated till now.
Haha sorry, my mistake, Type error. I hear you but if i do install 32bit then i might aswell leave it as 3 gig and not buy the extra gig because 4 wouldnt be recognized. If you dont mind me asking, how do you go about stripping down Vista and Win 7? For XP i just simply use a program called nlite. With it i can strip it bare.
Well, partly true, but you should be able to utilise up to 3.5GB. RAM is quite cheap these days, but you can save the money and stick to 3GB because 500MB is not much, but it still helps a little. I'm not sure what you meant by flashy graphics, but you should be able to turn it off in Personalization by changing to Windows 7 Basic or Windows Classic (Win2k).
Yeah true. I guess ill just have to install a 32bit version and make do. Just had a browse on ebay and found a 1GB low density stick of ram for £6.80. Really cant complain with that. Even if it does not recognize once installed, it wont hurt to have back up ram lieing around incase of a failure on one of the others. What i meant was, when you compare Win XP to Win 7/Win 8, the display in graphics is clearly a big difference. In my opnion there really isnt any point in me installing any of them if all im going to do is switch off the only real thing that makes them appealing. The only thing i need this computer for is as iv said, home video editing. Chai, Thank you very much for all of your help. You have been brilliant. This is by far the best computer advise/help forum i have ever used. What ever you do, please dont ever leave this forum, ill more that likely be back some time soon. Thanx again mate
Oh ok... Win7 is not just about UI. It's more secure, faster, and boots up much faster. Win 8 is even faster. Don't worry, as long as the forum is still here, we will be here to help!
My mistake. The minute I saw Acer Aspire, I was already thinking "laptop"! As they say, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me... LOL! Like Chai, I would prefer to upgrade to at least Windows 7. It is the Windows that Windows Vista should have been.
well Chai, Adrian and Durks, see the specs on the Acer Aspire T180 laptop on the Acer web site: Acer Support: Aspire T180 Specifications original specs show that it can support WinXP SP2 (Home & Pro editions) as well as WinXP MCE (media center edition) and Linpus Linux - ALL are 32-bit OSes forget about using 64bit editions of Windows as the Acer T180 laptop and its hardware cannot handle them as they require a motherboard and bios that fully supports 64bit OSes. 64bit Windows OSes work only on 64-bit ready hardware best option is to upgrade to a 32bit (x86) edition of Windows 7
Personally, I would skip 64-bit XP, it is pain to find the right drivers. If you're comfortable with 32-bit windows XP, use it. You don't have to use Windows 7 if you don't want to. I use XP Virtual Machines all the time for my older software. It is fine putting 4GB of RAM in the system, XP will run fine, but will not fully utilize 4GB. I have ran Windows 7 64-bit on Pentium 4 based systems without much problem. Just had to hunt for some drivers. Other than that, most hardware works.
From experience, my NEC notebook was installed with Vista and all I had was Vista drivers. Then I tried to install a fresh Windows 7 and used the Vista drivers, everything went flawlessly.
Windows 7 can use Vista drivers AFAIK. Not optimal for performance, but works well enough if you do not intend to play 3D games... Yes, it's safest to install a 32-bit OS especially when it comes to finding old drivers, but the AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU supports 64-bit OSes, so it should have no problem using any 64-bit OS.
Yeah, but I would still download the drivers using a different computer first. At the very least, you will need the most basic drivers - the chipset driver if you are going to connect to the Internet via LAN, and the WiFi driver if you are going to connect to the Internet via WiFi. Otherwise, it would be impossible to check Windows Update.
