Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Help!? Toshiba Satellite A205 XP downgrade

Ol 'Zab · 06-17-2008, 10:28 AM

What finally worked for me:

After trying many different drivers and orders of installation with the same results as I originally got, I finally decided to try what a few had said you needed to do, and many had said you don't, which is find a BIOS that supports XP.

I went and looked at the latest BIOS for the A205-S4797 at the Toshiba USA website, and, lo and behold, it said it supported XP and Vista. I installed it via the "by Windows" method since the boot CD method didn't work.

Then I reinstalled all the drivers again, from the chipset and all the other couple of dozen, including the Toshiba common modules and Toshiba Hotkey Utility and this time *everything* worked perfectly as advertised and the puter is just like a brand new XP machine.

I used the instructions and installation order of drivers from the Toshiba Europe site, and also used a couple of drivers from the Toshiba Canada site. Since the A205 is not sold in Europe or Canada, in order to determine which was the correct one among the drivers where there were many to choose from, I picked the ones that were offered for the Satellite model with the hardware that most closely matched mine, especially chipset, onboard video, etc.

So, in closing, for me the key was to find a BIOS that supported XP. After installing that, everything was as it was supposed to be.

Yay!

06-17-2008, 10:28 AM	#4 (permalink)
Ol 'Zab Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 3 OS: XP SP2	Re: Help!? Toshiba Satellite A205 XP downgrade What finally worked for me: After trying many different drivers and orders of installation with the same results as I originally got, I finally decided to try what a few had said you needed to do, and many had said you don't, which is find a BIOS that supports XP. I went and looked at the latest BIOS for the A205-S4797 at the Toshiba USA website, and, lo and behold, it said it supported XP and Vista. I installed it via the "by Windows" method since the boot CD method didn't work. Then I reinstalled all the drivers again, from the chipset and all the other couple of dozen, including the Toshiba common modules and Toshiba Hotkey Utility and this time everything worked perfectly as advertised and the puter is just like a brand new XP machine. I used the instructions and installation order of drivers from the Toshiba Europe site, and also used a couple of drivers from the Toshiba Canada site. Since the A205 is not sold in Europe or Canada, in order to determine which was the correct one among the drivers where there were many to choose from, I picked the ones that were offered for the Satellite model with the hardware that most closely matched mine, especially chipset, onboard video, etc. So, in closing, for me the key was to find a BIOS that supported XP. After installing that, everything was as it was supposed to be. Yay!