I recently bought a new Inspiron 1721 from Dell, it had Vista Home Premium included but I'm just so annoyed by its slowness, programme incompatibility, and resource hog.

So I want to install XP, I have a Dell Windows XP Professional disk. The laptop has two hard drives that are shown as one in Vista due to raid. Could I just bung my disk in and install XP by formatting my hard drive. In the windows setup will it still show as only having one hard disk. Could I even install it in the first place? Please someone answer.

Edited February 3, 200817 yr by thealexweb

I've never used a laptop with a RAID setup, so I may not help you with this issue, but if you plan to install fresh Windows XP installation, here's what you should do...(at least that's the case with PC's, not sure if it applies on laptops with RAID as well.

Aquire the WinXP RAID drivers for your laptop from manufacturers web site (you'll need an external USB floppy unit, so you can install those drivers during the first stage of Windows installation. You'll have to press F6 when needed.

I know that IBM laptops have a hidden partition that can be only deleted with some third party tools like Partition Manager. These hidden partitions holds Windows pre-install that you got licenced when buying laptop.

If that's the case with Dell too, you will install new OS (WinXP) and you'll still have that hidden partition if you later decide to try Vista again..

I hate to be mean but, like most other companies, Dell has not made ANY XP drivers for your laptop.

I hate to be mean but, like most other companies, Dell has not made ANY XP drivers for your laptop.

On Dell's support page for the Inspiron 1721 all but one driver supports XP.

Well you searched better than me I was just going by this:

I am very sorry to have mis-stated myself.

When you look at the individual pages from each driver there is a list of what operating systems they run on. For example the Creative Labs Dell Webcam Manager is compatible with Vista 32, Vista 64 and XP.

Hmmm I can't find the SATA boot drivers though. Whats your service tag? It will greatly simpilify things. (Its on the underside ussually)

Did some googling and found out you might have the option in bios to set the SATA drives to be recognized as ide, can you find such an option?

I know this is slightly unrelated to what was dicussed above but I've just got hold of a Windows Vista Ultimate key. Could I use my existing DVD to install Ultimate because I heard that all copies of vista are on one disk.

Yes, you can. After selecting the vista you purchased, it will ask you to enter in the product key.

I've searched really long and really hard to find a soluation to this problem. The good news is THERE ARE REAL, WORKING drivers for the AHCI SATA RAID controller in the Inspiron 1721. And here they are, from IBM:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-68363.html

(oops, fixed the link now!)

It includes the Textmode driver which you can streamline with nLite into an XP install disc. Everything works perfectly

If you have trouble creating your own install .iso using nLite or something similar, there is now a torrent available (if you look for it you should find it) with a ready-built XP SP3 image for the 1721, just use your existing license key if you install it.

Edited August 13, 200816 yr by gaspoes

I've searched really long and really hard to find a soluation to this problem. The good news is THERE ARE REAL, WORKING drivers for the AHCI SATA RAID controller in the Inspiron 1721. And here they are, from IBM:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-68363.html

(oops, fixed the link now!)

It includes the Textmode driver which you can streamline with nLite into an XP install disc. Everything works perfectly

If you have trouble creating your own install .iso using nLite or something similar, there is now a torrent available (if you look for it you should find it) with a ready-built XP SP3 image for the 1721, just use your existing license key if you install it.

Wow thanks, sorry it took me so long to reply.

Edit: I've followed your advice but decided to use nLite to compile my own iso, no chance of nasty viruses then. I integrated the driver and SP3 and I am currently testing it in Virtual Box.

Edited February 18, 200916 yr by thealexweb