At work I converted a Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 from Vista to Windows XP. Initially, the A135 didn’t run Vista at an amazing speed, but after I took the time to remove the excess of startup programs, 3rd party vendor software, and all the other useless bells and whistles that came pre-installed, the machine ran Vista to my satisfaction. (Though heavy multi-tasking might have pushed the system had I tried it).

The only problem with switching from Vista to XP on the A135 is that the Toshiba never offered it as an XP machine. Therefore, the only drivers offered on the official product support page are Vista drivers. I went through countless forums and hundreds of dead links to XP drivers before I managed to get a working set together. So, in an effort to save other people time, here is a driver set that won’t be disappearing any time soon.

If you have problems with the set, please let me know. The installation order is marked in the file names.

Important Note About the Graphics Driver: In order to get the video driver to work, extract the drivers to a folder. Then you need to install the driver manually – do not use the setup.exe! Do this through the Windows Device Manager. When prompted, select to add a new driver, select to choose the driver location, and then manually select the driver from the extracted driver folder. If I remember correctly, there are several driver files, and you might have to try this a few times. (It has been a while since I did this, but I do remember the video driver installer not working properly, so you have to install it manually).

Download the drivers.

Note: A few of the comments ask about the password on the .ZIP file. I find this puzzling, seeing as there is no password on the file. If you’re prompted for the file, you’ve either downloaded the wrong file or you need to download a more up-to-date ZIP utility.

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