As you know vaio notebook (VGN-N250E) is shipped with windows vista basic premium. With only 1 GB RAM available running resource intensive program is kind of slow, especially with lack of free RAM. Adding 1 GB RAM might help, but some people say the performance is still slow. Furthermore there are many incompatibility issues with my old programs. Thus, i decided to downgrade to XP.Well one problem is finding the drivers required for XP. VAIO support site provides the notebook drivers for USA user, but it is for Vista. They also don't recommend the user to downgrade. After tired of searching for the driver, Finally, some guys in this forum has nicely packaged the drivers required and uploaded it in this links:

• http://download.yousendit.com/A5EC3148279FEFFC

• http://www.sendspace.com/file/51keic

• http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P22ONQ7Y

• http://www.filefactory.com/file/201bb5/

The file size is 90.2 MB and most of it works. The audio, modem, wireless, network, motherboard, Intel GMA works. i haven't tested the memory card reader because i rarely used it. But i think i don't work because i can't see the device on my computer menu which usually available back then when i still used vista. Well, because i rarely used it i guess may be  I'll search for the driver later. Thanks to lburna95 on notebookreview forum.

I keep the recovery DVDs just in case something goes wrong but it turns out to be ok and the notebook performance frankly much better. But Some of the driver required XP Sp1 and Sp2 to be installed, so to be safe just install XP Sp2.

There was problem though, when i tried to make notebook dual boot by install linux (Fedora Core 5). Somehow the partition can not be read by partition magic 8 and FC5 installer. Partition info tools on PM8, said that the MBR sector ( i think) should be at the beginning of the hardisk and also there were partition header error. Well i don't really understand cause it has no problem when installing xp, but i guess i because of the 6 GB partition used by the recovery menu.

I formated the entire hardisk and then install linux and xp and it's ok now. But the audio is not recognized by Fedora 5. Hmm, now i need to search the drivers for linux.