How to downgrade Gateway LT31xx Netbook to XP - answer

Hey all,

I just struggled through this process so I thought I would share in hope that at least one other human being benefits from my wasted time.

I have a Gateway Netbook LT3103 which I love. However, I find Vista too clunky on it so I wanted to downgrade to XP. I have a legal XP installation CD and here's how I got it done. You will need a USB CD reader to get the installation onto the netbook and a CD burner on another computer (or a USB CDR on the netbook).

I did all this on a separate Vista machine, but there is no reason you couldn't do it on the Netbook assuming you have a USB CDR.

1. In order to do a fresh install, you need the SATA drivers for XP. They are NOT on the XP CD nor on SP3. I tried everything I could find on the Gateway support site to find drivers and finally gave up and chatted with gateway support. They sent me this link - http://support.gateway.com/support/d...65669&site=int .

2. Downloaded and unpacked those drivers (by default they go into a directory C:\cabs).

3. Downloaded XP SP3 exectutable and put it in a folder called SP3.

4. I then downloaded a slipstreaming program called nLite (freeware - lots of online mirrors) which will create a new XP installation disk incorporating the new drivers and Service Pack 3.

5. Copy the contents of your Windows XP install CD into a folder (e.g. C:\XP_modified, etc.).

5. Run nLite, choosing to
a. use the install copy from XP_Modified directory
b. slipstream XP service pack 3 from the appropriate directory
c. include the drivers from the C:\Cabs directory
d. create a bootable ISO.

Now you should be able to put a blank CD in your burner and burn a new SP3 installation disk with the correct drivers for your hard disk.

Once you have finished this step, then run FDISK or a similar program on your Netbook hard disk to repartition and reformat it. (This is necessary because Vista won't let you install XP over it, nor should you.)

Now you should be able to install XP using your Product Key from your original XP installation disk.

Hope this saves someone some headache!

I do plan on upgrading to Windows 7 in time. Of course, now I will have to do a clean install of 7 since I don't think it will upgrade over XP.

The performance improvement is noticeable with XP. The little netbook isn't great at power multitasking, but I can photoshop large RAW images, etc. without any problem.

moved on to Windows 7

As requested, I thought I would update now that I have moved on to Windows 7.

Here are some notes that might help:

1. It was much easier than the downgrade to XP since W7 already had the appropriate SATA drivers.

2. This upgrade (XP --> W7) requires a clean install so you must back up all your files and settings first. Try using MS Easy Transfer Wizard software. It is a free download for XP and will backup most of your stuff to a flash drive and then you can simply reinstall it from W7. The Easy Transfer program is included in W7.

3. When installing W7, choose the "Custom Install" option at the beginning to initiate the clean install. It does save your older documents/settings in a Windows.old folder, but backup first anyway.
Just for reference, the techs at Microsoft told me that sometimes the clean install from the Vista --> W7 Upgrade disk has trouble with the activation process. If your clean install won't activate (won't accept your product key), they will activate it by phone. I did two clean installs -one 64bit and one 32bit - and they both went without problem - i.e. I didn't have to call.

4. The upgrade from XP was simple enough. I used my Windows 7 32 bit disk since I had used the 64 bit disk on my desktop. You get both disks in the upgrade package and Microsoft says the license allows one of each installation. Since the netbook doesn't use more than 2Gb of RAM, I really couldn't see the value of it having the 64bit OS.

5. I installed W7 from within XP (i.e. started the W7 setup utility on the DVD from within XP).

6. I downloaded the appropriate drivers from the Gateway website first and put them on a flash drive. HOWEVER, if you search for the drivers on the Gateway website for W7, you get a series of new drivers, which is great.
BUT, the chipset driver version for W7 does not include the video driver. To get the video driver you have to download the chipset/video driver combination for Vista instead. (So download the W7 drivers and the Vista Chipset/Video drivers. Install the chipset driver set, but search for the video driver in the older Vista driver files).

The result? Windows 7 works much better than Vista on this netbook and works at least as well as XP if not better. I haven't run into any problems yet other than the hassle of having to install all my software again.
I will update if I have any issues, but so far so good.

My recommendation - upgrade!

Chris

Apparently I spoke too soon in this regard. My desktop version (64bit install) had not activated when I first installed it and when it tried to activate it, it failed. I had to call Microsoft and sit online for an hour while they asked me the same questions over and over again ("Did you buy the software in a retail store or is it an OEM version?", "Are you sitting at your desktop now?" - in spite of the fact that I had been sitting there following their suggestions for the last 30 minutes!). Then they treat you like an imbecile ("Can you find the Start Button?", "Let's see if we can find the search function together?"!!!)

Anyway, 45 minutes of condescending questions later, they give me a new product key and everything works fine.

OK, the saga continues one last time.
Everything works great, but my Gateway failed to activate. I called the Automated Phone Activation number and got it to activate without a problem. I probably should have done that with the desktop as well - my mistake!
So everything is up and running.
Windows 7 is an improvement on the Gateway netbook.