Driver Issues

As I had previously mentioned in the topic I posted previous to this, I have been given an Inspiron 546.
It came with an installation of Vista, which, I'm not a fan of, so, I installed Windows XP Pro. [Currently SP2]
I am currently having driver issues which i did not previously have.
I would appreciate the usual, great, RomU support.
My specs are as follows:
Inspiron 546 Minitower, Black Bezel
Inspiron 546 AMD Phenom X4 9650 (2.3GHz, 2MB)
6GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 2X2GB+2X1GB
ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB
750GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme AudioIf any other information is required, please let me know.

the audio chip is a VIA Vinyl, as far as I can tell, but you may need a windows update to be able to use it.SMBus really isn't important, but without knowing what the motherboard/chipset is I can't tell you what driver it would need.

Would there be an alternate method for going about such?
Seeing as how I cant update to SP3 because im running XP Pro x64.
I dont mind the SM Bus controller, but the lack of audio is annoying at best.

XP 64 bit is very poorly supported by both software and drivers. You'd be better off going with windows server 2003 enterprise 32bit (theres a hidden setting to support more than 4GB of RAM) or server 2003 64bit, which has much better software compatibility.

I cant seem to find Server 2003.
Would it be OK to simply dual boot with Windows 7 for the time being?
Then, once its officially released, install over both partitions.
Also, is there any way of fixing the sound without installing a new OS?
XP Pro x64 is satisfactory to my needs, and I would like to keep it until the official release of Windows 7.
My only current gripe, is of course, the sound issue.
How would I check the sound card specifics? I downloaded a combined combo audio codec pack for VIA Vinyl's and it said the hardware was not detected on my computer.Ah, just realized not only am I without sound, but certain programs/games such as Fallout 3 require sound to start.

Why don't you tried the dell website?
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

I have. unfortunately it didnt help much, in the sense that this PC apparently requires 3 audio drivers in total. Only one of which was fixed with the 1 available audio driver.

try getting driver genius from demonoid and running it, it should get the driver files you need.

As I said in another thread, programs such as driver genius are unreliable and have a tendency to get outdated versions of drivers.

manny2260 · #7I have. unfortunately it didnt help much, in the sense that this PC apparently requires 3 audio drivers in total. Only one of which was fixed with the 1 available audio driver.

I read that you have a soundblaster card too? is it working fine? or maybe there a onboard soundcard at your mobo? why don't you try contacting the dell support team.

it might be worth trying the creative website for sound blaster drivers, even if its an onboard one.

Loonylion · #9As I said in another thread, programs such as driver genius are unreliable and have a tendency to get outdated versions of drivers.

yes but he will atleast know the names of the drivers he needs, instead of guessing and installing a bunch of different ones.