Changing the OS

O

oekoeloe

Member
Hello,

I have a HP Compaq 6730b with windows vista home 32 bit.
The recovery disk is on the hard drive and has it's on partition.
(I never received an actual CD)

Can I format the hard drive and install windows XP 32 bit?
Do I still need a windows vista 32 bit from HP to reinstall certain drivers?

I have formated the hard drive before and installed it again with the recovery station.

Will this conflict with windows XP if I tried to install it?

Thank you,

Oekoeloe
 
I do not see why it wouldn't be able to install XP to it. But just know that sometime this year, within 2 months I think, XP will loose all support from Microsoft. This is not a good reason to stop using it, but just thought you should know.

You have a ICH9b chipset in that machine, so you will need to choose compatibility to install XP, or slipstream the ICH9b drivers to the XP disk.

Otherwise, I am not sure how your recovery partition would affect it, but I know I have used a recovery partition from an acer with Ubuntu installed and it didn't affect Ubuntu, but the recovery media allowed me to choose what partition to recovery. Then again, some of them wipe the entire drive and set the HDD back to factory. This would cause your XP install to go out the window. So, it will depend on how your partition works.
 
How do I make it compatible for XP?
Is it at the installation of XP or before formatting?

And how about the serial key. I read that the serial key is marked on some motherboards and wouldn't allow other serials from different/other OS cd's
 
It is an option in the BIOS. Mine is listed under SATA mode in the BIOS, and I am running A09 BIOS with ICH8 in a Dell D630. Yours should be somewhat similar.
 
Any particular reason why you are changing the OS to XP? If its because vista has issues, I would actually upgrade to windows 7.

You may find out that on most laptops, you can't change the mode of the sata controller at all. So if this is the case, you would have to slipstream the sata controller driver into a new XP install cd, which sometimes can be a real pain.
 
from the product specs page over at HP, there was an option for XP from the factory which tells me it either has a IDE mode, or they offer XP media to it. He may want to look to HP for restore media if he can not change the ACHI controller mode. That may be simpler in the long run.
 
The reason is that at booting it gets stuck at the loading bar.
The bar moves but it does nothing else.
After 4 times of restarting it finally gets passed it.
It also sometimes hangs at the Welcome screen or even on the desktop(less often)

I tried cleaning up startup programs/services.
Scanning for viruses.
Cleaning everything, also defrag.
Installed everything to the most recent update for drivers.
Also using the 'Last known good configuration' at the boot menu doesn't help.

I'm gonna check if I can use a readyboost USB first maybe.

But it all occured after a certain vista update. I formatted before and had to install those updates again. After a certain group of updates it happened again. But I don't know which one. Or it could be something else. Some file or program that's influenced by the update maybe.
 
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what I would do in this case is reinstall vista and not install the updates. At least not all of them, just install the ones that fix a problem that you have. Also, go to the manufacturers site to get the latest drivers for your hardware. DO not get it from HP.

This should fix your issue. Vista is a great OS, and I would hate to see you go back to XP because of a simple update issue.
 
The hardware doesn't allow me to get it from it's own manufacturer, like intel.
It says I have to get it from HP.
But, I'll try Vista again first.

Thanks for the help everyone
 
That is BS. Your chipset and Graphics drivers can be found strait from the Intel website. The wireless card driver from Intel, Atheros, or broadcom. and your ethernet from Bradcom. Any other drivers you would need would come from HP, or we could find them if we knew what they are.

Anyway, you wil be better off with Vista.
 
oekoeloe said:
The hardware doesn't allow me to get it from it's own manufacturer, like intel.
It says I have to get it from HP.
Click to expand...

wolfeking said:
That is BS. Your chipset and Graphics drivers can be found strait from the Intel website. The wireless card driver from Intel, Atheros, or broadcom. and your ethernet from Bradcom. Any other drivers you would need would come from HP, or we could find them if we knew what they are.

Anyway, you wil be better off with Vista.
Click to expand...

if you use the auto detect feature that intel has, it says you would have to get the drivers from the laptop manufacturer. Try finding the drivers manually, they may install or may not, all depending on the hardware.
 
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