How to UPGRADE from Vista to Windows XP on an Acer laptop

Step 6 Finishing & Troubleshooting / Tips

When your computer reboots, hit F2 again to enter the BIOS. I changed my boot order back to HD first (shaves a whole 2-3 seconds off bootup time), but that's up to you. Change from IDE mode back to AHCI, save changes and exit. Once you boot to Windows, your computer will find and finish installing the "new" hardware, then likely ask to restart again.... but hooray! No more Vista!

Troubleshooting: If you still get a blue screen upon booting up, you may not have selected the correct AHCI driver. Reverting the Bios setting to IDE should get you back into XP to try again. If not, use F8 to go into Safe Mode and reinstall the controller driver there.

Tips: I ran into an issue where my favorite OpenGL screensavers won't run over 1fps on the 5620. After finding out that this is why (Intel disables OGL hardware acceleration on screensavers), I then found a workaround: rename screensavers to *.sCr instead of all lowercase. You may have to reboot, but then they should all work smooth again. This affects all X3100 users, or anyone with Intel GPU's.

Comments

[otakukunsan]

Ah, this is a really old article(?), so perhaps it doesn't matter now.

I've got an Acer Extensa 5420, and I found out the hard way, by simply cloning to a larger hard drive, that it's very easy to break access to the PQSERVICE partition to restore my laptop to factory default settings. Obviously changes or corrupting the C: or PQSERVICE partition will break access via Alt+F10 or eRcovery, but so can hiding or reformatting the D: DATA partition, since eRecovery establishes a "relationship" with D: during initial setup, which it seems can only be modified manually afterward, perhaps requiring both the registry and BCDEdit. It's possible to suggest that I'm wrong, but I've spent many, many days using the original hard drive and two cloned drives trying to determine why the clones lose access to the recovery partition.

Also, I did indeed make recovery DVD's using eRecovery, and tried to restore access to PQSERVICE by using them, but they failed every time. The DVD's restored the C: partition, but not access to the recovery partition. Considering the recovery partition utilizes a "switch" or "input code" (Alt+F10) for access, and the partition is hidden using the partition ID=27, it's possible that eRecovery discs will not include the recovery partition. So far cloning using the 2009 Seagate or WD version of Acronis True Image both somehow managed to break access to the recovery partition. EaseUS ToDo Backup Free also failed to restore after performing file or sector by sector backups, but that was because it somehow misinterpreted the allocated space of all the partitions to slightly larger than the factory hard drive. The problem might be the utility Acer used to create the partitions, how they were accessed at the time, and/or the BIOS in conjunction with the physical specifications. EaseUS Drive Clone/Copy cannot technically clone from large to small hard drives, and it has an "unwritten" strict technical methodology which must be followed, but it better revealed the problem with restoration. If you decrease the size of partition D: DATA, you can clone from large to small, or create backups which will be more successful at restoring. This suggests that slightly "shrinking" volume D: DATA, before using a third-party drive imaging/backup solution will significantly improve chances for successful recovery later. In both Vista, Windows 7, and it would seem Windows 8, you can expand volume D: DATA after a successful restore using disk management.

All of this is simply to suggest that while eRecovery should restore volume C: ACER, it won't necessarily restore PQSERVICE or volume D: DATA. In testing I placed files in both volumes C and D, and after restoring using the discs, the files I placed in volume D were still present, and I could not access the "built-in" recovery. So, considering warranty and factory installed hard drive size, it might be better to simply replace the originally installed hard drive with a larger or faster hard drive, keeping the older drive in case of needed factory repair. Otherwise, I recommend that before you "wipe" the hard drive of all partitions, or install any OS which can break Acer's MBR offset for recovery, test your backup discs using a different borrowed or bought hard drive. If the test drive is smaller, but more than half the size of the original, like a 120GB to a 160GB or a 60GB to an 80GB, simply "shrink" volume D: DATA before creating the backup. You won't need to create another set of recovery disks if successful because you can always "expand" volume D: DATA after completing the recovery.

Then again, maybe my laptop just doesn't like me and is making my life difficult, which makes my comment a moot point.

[S-Nocturnus]

I signed up in this site just so I could thank you for this Excellent tutorial ! I bought a new Acer Aspire 5738Z today and first thing I thought about is to get rid of Vista..I had the blue screen error issue but thanks to this tutorial I solved it really quick..I like the way you dealt with the AHCI problem , it works great! Now I have a new laptop with a clean fast XP on it! Thank you!

ps: I think there is a little typing error in step 5 , there is a "DRIVER" word missing in this command : Open the command line (Start -> Run -> cmd), and enter "c:\AHCI\setup.exe -a -pc:\" should be like that Open the command line (Start -> Run -> cmd), and enter "c:\AHCI\setup.exe -a -pc:\DRIVER" otherwise some people who are not familiar with dos and file systems will not find the .inf needed..