brandondawson.org Drupal Website Developer and Consultant

2Jan/09101

Downgrading the Toshiba Satellite U305-S5077 to XP

I had to assist in the downgrading of a Toshiba Satellite U305-S5077 to Windows XP from Windows Vista last night, and it turns out that Toshiba does not make this convenient or easy, despite it being totally in their power to do so.

Here are the drivers you need, with handy links (in most cases, to Toshiba's own site, which should have this information, but does not.)

Update:Some users have reported these drivers to be non-working for their systems. I don't know if this means that some U305's are using new devices since I created this post, or if it's user error (I suspect a little of both.) So, please do take all due precautions when using these drivers, even though the majority of respondents here have reported them as operational.

Update, March 20, 2011: I appreciate all the folks taking time to thank me for this couple hours' worth of work. It really has been interesting to hear from some of the 9,329 people who --to date-- have been helped by this post.

But, that said, please DO NOT expect "custom support"; I have no particular interest in Toshiba laptops, nor am I regularly engaged in technical support, and so I DO NOT know how to help you with your specific model. I just figured I'd put this post up, and help others as a side benefit of the time I invested working on this machine for my cousin. In short, beyond helping point you to these drivers, and in the one case, actually hosting it, I cannot help you.

Many of these drivers have been reported to work for other "U305" models, but I do not and can not make any particular claim or warranty as to their suitability for use in models different from the actual Toshiba U305-S5077 that I actually personally put my hands on back in January 2009.

So, without further ado, here's the drivers: