12 replies to this topic

[hardwarefan]

Hi all!

Is there anyone out there searching for a Driver for Windows XP @ MacBook Air GeForce 320M (late 2010) like me?
The Hardware of this notebook is really good, and i would love and need to use dual boot with MacOS X.
Windows 7 is supported natively by apple (drivers included), but they do not want us to use WinXP on it.
Some rumors i heard that it is because of the limited read/write cycles of the included SSD,
and WinXP is not optimal since it makes a lot of small writes,
Win7 seems to be better and sort of optimized for the use of SSD Harddisks.

I already managed to get Windows XP up and running with bootcamp + a few tricks like ReFit and chaning the boot.ini,
and also managed to get most of the hardware running (WLAN, Audio, Ethernet over Apple USB Adapter, ...) with use of the
bootcamp drivers v3.0 and then updated to v3.1.

The most important driver still missing is the one for the graphics card.
I searched the net for the last days, and found out that all of the drivers out there are not working.
The only one that might have worked is the one of Jason Fearing:
NVIDIA 320M drivers for Windows XP - http://files.me.com/..._fearing/jai1zj
Unfortunatley, the link is down.

So i really hope someone out of this forum can help! You are the PRO's!!
So if anyone can help, i think here is the best chance :-)

Thank you all for any helpful input in advance!

all the best and have a great day!

Peter :-)

Dieser Beitrag wurde von hardwarefan bearbeitet: 05 November 2010 - 03:33

[hardwarefan]

I just found out my vendor id's, perhaps this can be helpful in solving the problem!

VEN_1AB8&DEV_4005&SU
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8029&SUBSYS_04001AB8&REV_00\3&11583659&0&28

Hardware ID:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2&SUBSYS_00D4106B&REV_A2
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2&SUBSYS_00D4106B
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2&CC_0300

Compatible IDs:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2&REV_A2
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_08A2
PCI\VEN_10DE&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&CC_0300
PCI\VEN_10DE
PCI\CC_030000
PCI\CC_0300


Unfortunately, when i narrow the search with adding DEV_ ..... and Drivers for Windows XP 32bit,
all Driver Download Links throw out an error message:
Driver details are temporarily down until a fix is provided.
Please use the forums to find the driver details for now.

[hardwarefan]

Ok, i finally got it working :-)

NO kidding.
Windows XP SP3 Dual Boot System on MacBook Air 11" Late 2010, Graphics Card GeForce 320M.
If anyone is interested, you can PM me.

have a great day alltogether!

Peter

Dieser Beitrag wurde von hardwarefan bearbeitet: 05 November 2010 - 01:40

[mobilenvidia]

For all drivers that support PCI_ID 0842 look =xp"]here

There are a few drivers that natively support your GPU

[hardwarefan]

Hi mobilenvidia :-)

Thank you very much for your reply!

Here is what i did to make it work (of course it is not the optimal solution but at least i have full resolution now and the windows do not "stutter" when being moved ;-)
I used the nvidia drivers package "260.89_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe"
Link: http://download.cnet...4-10044975.html

and the modded inf i found at:
Link: http://www.laptopvid...31/nv4_disp.inf

Of course the automatic installation did not work, so i had to make it by hand (there is also a helpful thread in this forum on how to install the graphics drivers manually, basically you extract the drivers to a directory, overwrite the inf and Update the driver by hand)
The installation generated a few errors (missing files!), but it was possible to skip them (ignore/abort).
I thought the installation went wrong (like about a 100 times before ;-) but after a reboot,
i saw the full resolution and it seems to work right now! :-) Yeaaaaah!!
WinXP runs so smooth and fine on the MacBook Air, that i am really happy now. :-)

Still, it is not optimal:
When i play videos with VLC or GOM Player, the graphics still seem to be a bit slow (making horizontal boxes in the upper section of the video, where you can see it does not have the actual data from the actual frame) - compared to the same video being played on the MacBook Air in MacOS X 10.6 with VLC.

If you can make a better inf or some optimized driver, that would be AWESOME!!!
Belive me, i am not the only one who wants the "good ol' WinXP" running on actual hardware :-))

thank you very much for your kind support and have a great weekend!

Peter :-)

[hardwarefan]

Hi,

the WLAN driver for the MacBook Air Late2010 320M is included in the Bootcamp Driver Package.
I first installed 3.0, then updated to 3.1 and voila i then had Audio, WLAN,... (only Graphics did not work and a few other minor things)

Wish you a lot of fun and good work with WinXP on you MacBook Air!

Peter

[hardwarefan]

Hi all,

Just found out that the version 198.05 from nvidia seems to work best, is fast enough and you have the most settings.

With the newer version 260.89 i experienced some difficulties, when i attatched a 24" TFT to the Display Port, the driver switched to the 24" as a primary display, and would not go back to the macbook display as a primary one.
Tried everything from switching in the driver, resetting, Monitor Tools (Software), rebooting... nothing worked, the macbook display remained the second one.
With a big disadvantage: when you take your macbook with you, start up windows, you did not see the taskbar, star button etc. > so it was pretty useless...
(you could experince the same when you attatch a video-beamer!)

My recommendation is to use the nvida drivers version 198.05 where the MacBook Air late 2010 Graphics Driver is natively supported (no hacks necessary)

wish you all a lot of fun with Windows XP on your late 2010!

best regards, Peter

[hardwarefan]

Hi hardwarefan,
thank you for the update. I first installed the 260.89 on my MacBook Air late 2010, the graphic works fine. The only draw back was that the brigthness controll did not work any more. And with the 198.05 this did not change. How did you solve that issue?
Thanks a lot!
Best regards, Andreas

Hi Andreas,

unfortunately the brightness controll does not work in eighter of these drivers, i wonder if the admin of laptopvideo2go could help us there? :-))
I first tought it is because of a missing keyboard driver (play, pause, brightness...) but i am afraid it is also a driver issue.

Also a few other drivers are still marked as missing when running xp, but they are not really necessary.

If anyone can find them out and make a complete list, that would be awesome!!

best regards

Peter

[webcom]

Hi, how's it going everyone? :-D
I just tried to install Windows XP SP3 on my MacBook Air 13" 2010 and here I am with some question for you guys.
Following your guide I'm able to install everything and all the drivers work nicely: the problem is about the GeForce 320M drivers.
The only working video driver seems to be the 198.05 with the modified .inf file.
It works BUT I'm not able to control the brightness via Boot Camp at all.
In the meantime, someone tried to fix this thing? Or there's a newer driver (with mod inf.) that enables the brightness control?
It would be more than great to fix it and use xp at best on our great MBA 2010, don't you think?!
Any help or experience post would be much appreciated guys! ;-)