ACER apire 5738g format and installation

hello guys,i recently bought an acer aspire 5738g,it came with windows 7 home premium preloaded with only one partition.it is a 64 bit system
my problem is : i want to create more partitions and install windows xp pro(32bit) and ubuntu 9.10 and remove the existing windows 7.

the error im getting when i use bootable win xp cd is the traditional blue screen error with information about memory address and as such and i have to restart the system

1. this happens after i select boot from my cd and before it begins the windows installation

2. how do i install a new os removing the old one in this laptop ? im not a novice, i install os on desktops quite often

pls help,its urgent!!

Take look at this tutorial:

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Can you get to this screen?

The problem is likely that the old nearly-obsolete XP installer doesn't have the modern SATA controllers for your laptop.

If you dont have an equally obsolete floppy drive to insert the drivers at the F6 prompt during driver-loading phase, then you'll need to slipstream them into the XP installer.

Check also the SATA controller setting in the BIOS as XP may not run in ACHI mode.

May I ask why you are wiping Windows 7 from a Win7 laptop?

i tried wat 'theog' suggested...created d partition but wen i rebooted .n opted for xp installation...im gettin the same error about the memory ..something like "00xc000a12" something like dat wid blue screen background

@gregocker installing win xp coz some applications n games don seem to work on win 7

any reason?

theog said:

Take look at this tutorial:

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Can you get to this screen?

i got the first 2 steps in that tutorial

i.e with win7 installed...tryin to install xp part of the tutorial

hi, i partitioned my Windows 7 which had only one drive,now the other drive is named s and is a logical drive,wen i restart n try to install win xp using a bootable disk (followed ur tutorial:able to get til step 2(includin 2) of installin xp with win 7 already installed)

1. i get past the 'press any key to boot from cd..'

2. setup starts loading files

3.i get the blue screen error stating something about memory in the technical information section ..something like 0x00000c7aff

i dono wat to do...pls help

What SATA controller do you have?

You will need to download them & install at this screen:

rachankamath said:

@gregocker installing win xp coz some applications n games don seem to work on win 7

any reason?

Why get rid of Win7 which is the future and replace it with a nearly-obsolete OS just to play a few games that should be Win7 compatible soon?

Have you considered dual-booting with XP? Here's how:

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

theog said:

What SATA controller do you have?

You will need to download them & install at this screen:

my sata controller is AHCI intel

@gregrock : yea everyone r advisin me to keep win 7...so i want to have a dual boot wid xp now. are there any xp versions wid SATA controllers compatible withe ACER aspire 5738g? how to install them?

You can download drivers from here: (x32 or x64)

32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility

64-bit Floppy Configuration Utility