Asus F5R T2060 PC

Last weekend I picked up a very cheap Asus F5R Notebook, ok HD, ok Speed, ok screen etc.

Unfortunately, it was fitted with Vista Basic, and even though it never really used all of the 512mb of memory, it was constantly running the hard drive. Permanently, even with the indexing turned off.

So I did what most normal people would do, and replace Vista with XP Pro.

What a freaking pain in the neck.
Remarkably, Asus provide a large quantity of drivers on their site, however, because the age of most XP copies (mine dates back to early 2004) a lot of the current systems do not appreciate the settings. Even with SP2, some fixes are required that are not included in the setup, nor are they easy to find. So I thought I would put down some of my issues.

Bios
From the ASUS site, you can download WINFLASH, which is their XP based Bios flashing tool, and you can also download the latest version of the XP compliant BIOS (mine was originally FRAS.305) which was FRAS. There is also a manual for WINFLASH under the ASUS Manual section. I have no idea if this actually helped with anything in terms of setting the computer up, but its a start.

Video
I downloaded the driver from ATI (as it is an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 graphics) but this did not like the system under XP at all, but being 40megs it was an easier download than the ones from ASUS. So, I ended downloading the 120meg driver from ASUS. It installed, and worked first time through.

Excellent.

Audio
This was a pain.

Under the ASUS drivers site, they allow you to download a 30 odd meg file for the audio drivers. Even if you install this, the audio may not work (it will also influence the modem which is listed below) as the drivers are there, but the system cannot actually see any of the hardware. This requires a Microsoft Hotfix KB888111, a universal audio architecture high definition class driver. But, unfortunately, Microsoft do not keep this hotfix online, you supposedly have to talk to their product services (probably to stop you installing an old copy of XP on a new computer...) but thankfully, the Internet is more enabling than Microsoft, so you can find a copy of the hotfix here and following a nice short download, I removed my last attempt at the proper drivers, then loaded this file up, to which all of the devices appeared to XP, and I then reinstalled the ASUS sourced drivers. I had a small issue during the loading of these drivers, but I just skipped past that, and everything appears to be functioning. I have sound.

After doing all of this, I noticed a UAA driver set on the downloads from ASUS, but then remembered that I had already tried this early on with no success.

Modem
Trying to install the ASUS based modem drivers resulted in errors. You have to install the drivers listed for the Audio section above, in order for the system to actually see the modem. Once this is done, the modem appears, install the drivers, and all is good.

USB Controller
The USB controller was having issues and showing up under the unknown device section of the device manager. Once I had a number of other things fixed, I un-installed this setup and rebooted. Once it restarted, it found the hardware, and everything ran, at full speed rather than USB1.0 levels...

SM Bus Controller
The SM Bus controller was not functional. So, it was a bit of detective work to hunt down what it is. A basic work showed up ASUSTek SB600 SMBus Controller. This, thanks to SiSoftware's little program, managed to turn into a ATI Technologies Inc SB600 SMBus Controller, and with a bit more work, I found a download for an ATI southbridge controller that is compatible with the setup on the laptop. I downloaded it, installed it, rebooted, and it did not find it.
So, I right clicked on the SB Controller in the Devices list and tried to install a driver, and when it asked for a location, I hunted down the install of the Southbridge controller. After the computer thought for a bit, it came up as driver found. It still says "No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device", but this is normal.

Other stuff
TPM I am also having trouble installing one driver from Infineon TMP Professional Package. I have not researched this to actually see what it does, so to me, it may not be important, just annoying. When trying to install, it comes up with "Trusted Platform Module could not be found" error. With only a cursory web search, I haven't found any reason to care about this.

Positives
Well, besides the issues listed above, the machine performs extremely well under XP. It is fast, it loads far far quicker, and appears to function pretty well so far.