Acer M5640

Have tried those already.  Link on the experts-exchange does not work?  Just hoping someone had found easier solutions

What problems are you having with vista that you want to go back to XP?  Performance?

I find Vista is not user friendly and I need to install these computers on a Server network.  The users are famililar with XP and performance.  With Vista, not only will i experience user issues. i find it is not very network fiendly as well.  

I just picked up two of these units (m5640) off of eBay to build up for a construction company.  They require XP do to some specific software requirements.   I've got all the licenses, but can't seem to find the XP SATA drivers for these things.   I couldn't find a way to turn off AHCI in the bios either.  Has anyone had any luck?

This is the solution I found that works great:

Thought I would post this here as we have had a few customers "upgrade" this machine to Windows XP from Vista. Other posts we have found on the web have not lead to success in those forums. Here are some brief instructions to get someone started.

First: This Acer uses the NVIDIA® GeForce® 7100 and nForce® 630i chipset. You can download these drivers here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_...nxp_16.08.html

Also download and take a look at the RAID Floppy Disk Install document located on the right hand of the screen. Inside this PDF it will tell you what file are necessary to put on a floppy disk for installation.

There are many ways to go about the upgrade, but here is what we have done with complete success.

Create the floppy driver diskette as indicated in the above PDF.

This model machine actually has a floppy connection on the mainboard. So the easiest thing to do here is connect a floppy disk to the unit, boot the machine from your Windows XP CD and follow the usual installation routine. Create the floppy driver diskette as indicated in the above PDF.

Now during your Windows XP installation, hit F6 when required to install an alternate driver (from the floppy disk you have created).

** Take note, on this machine the default (and only choice in the current BIOS release) is to set the controller in RAID mode. You will want to have this set to RAID in any instance where you may want to use this chipset with Windows XP. Simply disable the RAID on the individual drive setup (if you do not want to use it) under the sub menu in the BIOS. (on my machines, loaded the second choice, which is the standard controller, raid was disabled in the BIOS)

This is simply and FYI. Hope someone may find this information useful.