I’ve just bought a laptop! And after spending three days installing Windows XP on it, it’s now usable too!
You see it came with Windows Vista pre-installed and although it looks absolutely gorgeous, Vista isn’t the most straight forward OS to use. After unsuccesfully trying to install Photoshop, Homesite and Cute FTP I called it a day and set off on my three day odyssey of XP installation.
It’s all about the drivers you see. Samsung don’t appear to even realise they have an R700 laptop on their UK site, let alone provide any XP drivers, so I had to spend hours investigating chipsets, generic drivers and other Samsung laptops in order to find out what I needed to do to get up and running. Suffice to say, being the genius I am, I’ve finally managed to get a stable XP install running. Go me!
The really cool thing about the R700 though is the price. £599 for a laptop with a Dual Core processor, 250 Gb hard disk, 2 Gb of RAM and a 1440 x 900 17″ wide screen on it, is good value in my book. Oh yeah, it’s got a full size keyboard with numeric keypad too!
Suffice to say it’s my favourite gadget right now. Of course my Nokia E90 should arrive tomorrow, so it might not be on the perch for long…
Hey that’s cool. I’ve got the same laptop and I’d like to install XP too. Please can you tell which drivers do you use and where have you found it? Cheers!
I sure can, I’ll have a look tonight when I get in and try and get a driver list together.
Actually thinking about it I could probably use a driver extraction utility to produce a disc for you!
Good lord! It looks like Samsung now do Windows XP drivers for the R700!
Get them here.
Good luck!
Hi there. Hope you’re still around.
I’m in the same boat with Vista and the R700, got the drivers and software from Samsung. What I’d like to know is your procedure.
There are a few out there online (and I’ve never done this before so…) and they vary, but you have the same machine as me! so I thought your way would be best. If you could be so kind as to…
Thanks E.
Plaamook, the best way to do this is to burn all the drivers (making sure they’re unzipped) onto a CD.
When you have that back up all your files and folders and important stuff on to a DVD or memory stick or such.
When you’ve done all the backing up chuck in your Windows XP DVD and start installing.
When you get to the product key section make sure you type in the product key you got with the Windows XP disc, or it might not let you past the ‘enter product key’ screen.
Once you’ve done this and Windows is installed, chuck in the CD of the drivers you made and run each of them in turn. You may have to reboot between installing some of them.
After you’ve done that activate XP. It will no doubt fail but you can use the Vista key on the bottom of the unit by entering it and phoning Microsoft to validate it manually for you.
Hope that works for you!
Thanks. I’ll let you know how it goes. E.
Please do.
If there are any problems let me know.
Well, all is almost well. Except the graphics driver. Did you have any problems with this?
I’ve got an error saying that setup cant find drivers compatible with current hardware? Any ideas? E.
Hi again. Got it going and… XP!!! Cheers dude. E.
No problem at all, it’s a great laptop made even greater by using Windows XP.
Hope you get plenty of enjoyment out of it.
Keep visiting the site though!
Hi, most helpful thread this!
I am just about to get a Samsung R700, but my adviser recommends Windows XP. One of the Samsung dealers says that some of the keys won’t work properly with XP (sounds unlikely to me) and that it will screw up the guarantee.
Also I presume that I will have to buy a copy of XP from somewhere? Plaamook, how long did it take you to install it? TIA, David.