Qosmio F55-Q504 Drivers for XP

Question

Hello everybody,
Please help. I have three questions:
1. May be somebody's already met problems with drivers for XP for F55. I bought F55 with Vista, installed XP but I've found drivers for WiFi and nVidia only and I was not able to find drivers for other devices unfortunately. On the official site thare are drivers for Vista only and there is not BIOS version for XP too. May be somebody knows where I can find them.
2. Together with the laptop there were no any CDs and recovery or reinstallation Vista is possible from HDD recovery partition only. For instance if I'm afraid to break recovery partition by my experiments with XP installation or Vista reinstallation and I want to make copy of the whole HDD to another one or to make copy of one partition. Is it possible? Did anybody try to do that? I tried to copy the whole HDD with Vista or separate partiotions (recovery partitions including) - the new HDD or partition is not loaded. I tried several time - there is no positive result. Is there any copy protection software on Toshiba's HDD? And how to make HDD copy to avoid data lost?
3. F55 has GPS and preinstalled Garmin Mobile PC? Turn-by-Turn Navigation? trial version. While loading the Garmin Mobile asks to enter key. Where can I find the key for this trial version? There are no any CD, sticker or box with the key. And who knows is there email support from Toshiba? On the official site there are some phones only but I can't call them I need e-mail.
Thanks a lot in advance.

Answer 1

Good day,
Thanks a lot for reply and usefull answer.
I downloaded drivers according to your links and some of them were really good. I tried to install some other drivers desighed for Vista and I had a success. Now I have two device only in device manger which are unknown. These are Audio Device on HD Audio Bus (it likes you described, driver for Vista is not suitable) and a SM host controller (I don't know what's that but it's not cardbus controller). I'll try find somthing for them.
And drivers installation arises new questions:
a. Of course my control buttons (fn and dolby, play/pause etc.) don't work. You've written: "And I miss also the program that made the touch buttons work. Seems there is no equivalent for XP. As for Config Free program try to use a XP version of the program that is made for a Satellite A series laptop. For me it worked." Please explain what's Config Free? Before I had thought that to make above buttons operating I have to downgrade my BIOS version. But on the official site there are two BIOS version only and both of them are for Vista. Unfortunately there is nothing for XP. Is it really that Config Free is software which can force control buttons to work without BIOS downgrading?
b. My laptop has 4Gb RAM. First time I installed Vista 32-bit edition and I saw that Vista saw all 4Gb of RAM. After that when I installed XP 32-bit edition I saw that XP saw 2,99 Gb only. I thought that after installation all drivers for my chipset the XP would see the whole 4 Gb of RAM. But now as I said above there are two unkonwn devices only in the Diveice Manager and XP see 2,99 Gb as before. Who knows should I find one more special drivers to allow XP to see the whole RAM or it's impossible for XP 32-bit and I have to install 64-bit edition?
Concernig copy of HDD. I tried to do that by Partion Magic, Paragon Partition Manager, Acronics and Ghost Images. And I tried to connect HDDs by different interfaces (from native laptop controller to external usb and reverse, and from one external usb HDD to another) - nothing. When I'm taking HDD with new installed XP, connecting it through external sata-usb controller to one usb port from one side and connecting another HDD through external sata-usb controller to other usb port from the second side I can do copy of the whole HDD or partition from the first HDD to the second. And new created HDD works and loads good. When I'm trying to repeat the same but with original HDD with Vista and recovery partitions it doesn't work. Moreover some partition managers (e.g. PMagic) see the first partition (which is called "Toshiba" and it's not hidden but with unknown file system) and last recovery hidden partition as invalid partitions and refuse attempting to make copy at once. But even if partition manager doesn't write an error at the beginning (Acronics - the best) and makes partition copies successfully the new created HDD doesn't load. And all advices to recover Vista begin: "boot from recovery cd, choose system recovery.....". I haven't any cd and my recovery utility from HDD offers me to install Vista again without any recovery options. Unfortunately...
Concerning Garmin I wrote to Garmin support and I'm waiting answer from them. That's great that driver for GPS from Vista is suitable for XP too.
Tks for reply and tks in advance.