Dell XPS M1530 - My Experience Switching from Vista to WinXP

OK, here's the deal. When they told you that, "You get what you pay for" -- that was only half true. A more true way to say it is, "You can get what somebody had to pay for." Here's what I mean:

I cannot afford to buy -- NEW -- an awesome, top-of-the-line, laptop like Dell's XPS M1530. But I can afford to buy a USED one. Which is what I did. In the past I've bought new "el-cheapo" laptops, and I've been disappointed. And I've bought used, super nice ones for which someone originally paid "high dollar" (which I got for "low dollar"), and been very pleased and satisfied.

I just bought a very nice, although used (and therefore affordable), Dell XPS M1530. I bought it via eBay. (This makes twice now that I've shopped carefully and bought a nice used laptop on eBay and been very pleased.)

But this unit comes stock with Vista Home Premium. I am no fan of Vista. So here are some tips gleaned from my interesting journey to change the OS over to Win XP Pro SP3.

There are three issues to address with switching from Vista Home Premium to XP Pro:

1. Drivers in general (Are they compatible with XP Pro?)

2. Hard drive access (This Dell uses a recent SATA AHCI Controller that is a little too-new for Win XP. The XP installer cannot understand the device in its mode of highest performance unless you help it out with a driver that can only be supplied right at the start of your OS install.)

3. Dell's MediaDirect 3.5 application (If not installed correctly, it either won't work and cannot be fixed, or worse, can wipe out your XP install just for trying to press the MediaDirect button on the laptop, according to one horror story I read while Googling.)

The good news:

#1 - Yes, the drivers needed are available and compatible with XP.

#2 - Yes, you can use the high performance mode of HD access via SATA AHCI.

#3 - Yes, Dell's MediaDirect 3.5 application is compatible with XP. But only if it's done right.

The bad news:

Dell does not have to help me, because XP is not supported on this unit; only Vista. Finding accurate information on all of this proved extremely difficult, and on some parts I never did. And finally, getting it done right took: time, several failed attempts, a lot of reading, and quite a bit of frustration. Now, to my interested readers who may be trying to do the same thing: I hope to spare you some of that pain I suffered.

Overall status: Complete success!

This story is developing ... So check back soon. My journey (to get the laptop switched over and ready for my media-rich, developer-heavy workload) is just about complete, and I'm nearly ready to report my very good results (even though I suffered a lot of frustration along the way).

More details coming soon.