Downgrade from Vista to XP on Gateway ML Series Laptop

I am getting an ml6720 and want to put xp on it. can i use a usb floppy to load the sata drivers after i hit f6 on the xp install?

Yes, the driver’s are supplied in the zip file I created.

Thanks for the drivers … of course I find this after I found most of the drivers, except the audio and modem. Well my problem was I slipstreamed XP SP3 with the sata drivers during the downgrade … and windows just saw a pci device in device manager … after some searching of the driver folders, I came to realize I needed to install UAA for HD Audio. Well SP3 has some issues, and I found this site, that actually has a fix for HD Audio.

http://www.dashken.net/index.php?/archives/254-Windows-XP-SP3-RC-v3264-Does-NOT-Support-High-Definition-Audio.html

After installing the drivers for UAA, I could then install the Sound, and Modem drivers.

Thanks again, hope this helps with those with SP3.

Hey man – thanks for that. Yeah I found this after the fact too. I just added a few things to the zip and am trying to help everyone else out as I needed it. I have xp on my Gateway now, and it’s sweet. Runs very well on this machine.

Yup bought this laptop for my fiance’s father. Vista was just too much of a hog for my taste, and I didn’t want to bother with upgrading the memory … so I downgraded it to XP Pro. It runs much better now.

Great job, thanks alot!

Well memory is pretty cheap. I bought 4gb off of New Egg for $70. It’s a great place to find hardware for your computer, and it’s cheap as hell!

What exactly do i do with the files? Theres no install file?

Hi randy any idea if I use a usb cd/dvdrom with the sata drivers will it work or any alternative to the usb flobby (cuz I dont have one at hand)
Thanks in advance

i tried like the 10th time now i dl nlite i ran the program i put the disk in my ml6720 gateway laptop everything runs till it gets to partition or delete hd and stats no detected hardware what would i be doing wrong here

@Jeremey:
These are drivers. You need to install XP to get them to work. You will also need to use a usb floppy to install the sata drivers.

@Wesley:
I’m pretty sure you will need to use a floppy drive for this one.

@Jason:
You need to use a floppy drive to install the sata drivers, this is why you are not making it past that screen. Once you do this, you will be able to continue on with the XP install.

I successfully installed windows xp, but there would be an error message when i try to install the chipset driver? I just need help getting all the drivers installed.
In what order did you install all the drivers??

ok got everything working here and no need to use floppy. in the zip file above instead of clicking all x86 drivers i had to go and select one of them comparing them to device manager for the hd driver. then when xp booted ran my copy of the partition from disk that came with the notebook and instealled the net drivers. then ran windows update and it dl the rest of the drivers. thanks for the nlit site and some helpful drivers a top :)

Well I didnt need the floppy just slipstreamed the sata drivers downloaded from here using nlite and all has gone smooth except that the audio driver installed and requested a restart after the restart it says device not supported.
Will search the web for another driver although it should be supported mines is the ml6725

Vista used 800mb of ram idle XP uses about 200mb

Thanks Justin – that’s a great help. I was running around in circles – I also slipstreamed sp3 and all the sata/video/modem/network drivers using nlite – but could NOT get the audio working. That link saved the day. Thanks again! Also big props to RandyR on the great site with the drivers and information. I think my wife is really going to like this notebook – nice and solid, huge screen, and BLAZING fast under XP.

I got thur the install of XP but during start up, I get a blue screen and the system restarts.. I cant read the blue screen because it goes away to fast but its a consistant loop over and over.

Anyone know a cure?

Wouldn’t going from Vista to XP be an upgrade?

i got the drivers on a floppy drive but it still does’t reconize my hard drive after i load the drivers in setup

wow i didn’t realize that i could scroll down…
but i’m having trouble connecting to my internet, thanks for the audio drivers though =]

This reply is to Randy and Ron,
Randy: thank you for having this info here for ML6720. I just found it right after I finally was able to put XP on my ML6720 laptop (after more than 2 weeks of googleing, sweating and trying everything else found in google to no avail). Nevertheless, I was going to post a blog with all what I tried and failed, and what actually worked for me while trying to put XP on my ML6720, but it looks like this blog already covers all of it.

Ron: I went thru the same situation (getting a quick blue screen after XP tried to start). It looks like this was caused by me trying to slipstream some SATA drivers that I was told were compatible with ML6720. Either I got the wrong drivers, or I was using the incorrect settings in my Winnt.sif (or similar) file, as I was doing a manual configuration.

Since that didn’t work, I tried using a USB floppy drive and pressing F6 during XP installation, but then I got to the point were XP installer requested a floppy disk labeled “Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver”, then press enter to continue. I would put in the disk, press enter all day and nothing would happen. The installer would not recognize the disk (I created new disks several times with different downloads).

Since that didn’t work either, then I decided to go back and try slipstreaming again. This time I decided to use Nlite. I didn’t want to use it before because I didn’t want to install the required dot_Net framework on my other machine, but this time I did it. I started Nlite, the process went pretty smoothly, I added SP2, added the SATA driver (this time I got the drivers from gateway), and provided all the answers for an “unattended” slipstreamed XP CD. Voila!. I just put in my newly created XP CD, created and selected my partitions, and went off to bed. Next morning my laptop was shining with a nice working installation of XP (no more repulsive vista stuff on it). The only problem was that I still had a couple of non-working components like sound and modem, but that was not a big problem for me.

Now I just found this blog, I just downloaded the drivers, and will try to install them tonight. I’m highly confident that I will get all the components working on my laptop by tonight.
Thanks again.

Hey all. Thanks for the nice info. I just got rid of Vista on my Gateway M-6752. Sound and graphics are fine. Installed Realtek network drivers, but can’t get rid of the yellow ! next to ethernet controller. Have installed everything I can find from Realtek. Is there a Intel driver missing?

More important, the wireless card is a Marvell Semiconducor card. Marvell site apparently has no drivers for XP nor can I find any help on Gateway site. I found one TOPDOG Marvell wireless driver for XP, but it tried to load a driver specific to a D-Link WLAN card. Any ideas?

After endless searching, I found a Netgear wireless card driver that will work for the Marvell wlan card in these Gateway systems:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/WN311T.asp

I used nlite (must have a full version of Windows XP CD also!):

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

to slipstream the SATA drivers downloaded from intel (965 Express Chipset):
Download Intel Drivers

and created the install disc for my notebook. Along with some of the drivers included above, it turned out beautifully! This definately isn’t a ‘downgrade’!!!

I was able to get my ML6720 running XP Pro without using a floppy drive. I used Nlite to slipstream Service Pack 3 into the installation along with all of the intel drivers including the SATA driver. Definitely seems like the way to go to me. Nlite takes a little time to learn (maybe an hour to get comfortable with it), but once you have it then you are glad you learned.

A friend brought me his ML-6720 about 2 weeks ago telling me that Vista was driving him crazy. I found this blog about 10 days ago, but sadly the drivers link was dead. I’ve tried everything I can think to get XP on it including F6ing the drivers and nLite. Is there something I’m missing? Please help if you can.

Can you upload the drivers again? Thanks.

Taken care of. The link should be back up…

Hey I have a gateway 1625 M series. Any drivers for making it a XP Computer I hate vista it sucks it sucks. lol

History: ML6720 CD/DVD stops responding using vista. unable to reinstall vista. Paid service got DVD working temporarily, then stopped responding again. CD/DVD not showing up in my computer or device manager on vista. Bought XP OEM, wiped drive. Cannot install as 6720 CD/DVD not working and cannot find optiarc driver online. Changing bios not working either. Installed XP on laptop hard drive via my desktop, but will not boot on laptop. Any suggestions?

well i am new here and i will like to know how to go about the bluetooth for this computer cos i have tried switching it on but it seams the bluetooth isnt comming up pls help me with how i can go about the bluetooth… u can send the reply to my email thanks alot.

oh sry i forgot to make the model of my gateway known to u… its is ml6720 i already downgraded it to xp from vista so i was thibking maybe its because of the downgrading… can u help me out pls?

I am not “real” computer savy. I recently bought a used Gateway MT6706 Notebook. It has Vista on it and all of my software is for XP. I would like to change it back to XP so I don’t have to buy all new software. Can I do it, and if so, how? Thanks.

Thx for all the drivers – but I gotta get XP installed first. I load the SATA drivers by floppy choosing the F6 option at the beginning, then just about time to format the disk Windows wants the “Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver”. I can’t seem to get this one loaded. ROADBLOCK – any ideas?

Thank you for the collection of drivers – saved my bacon! I used to live in St Louis too, where’d you go to high school? lol

@Greg – I just put xp on my ML6714 (similar to the 6720). I used Ryan VM Integrator to put in SP3 (was an SP2 disc), and then used DPsBase from driverpacks.net to slipstream the SATA/RAID drivers. I didn’t put in any extras, but will do that later.
XP Setup recognized my 320GB WD SATA with no problems, and no pressing F6. The drivers were all loaded during setup.