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OEM XP Installation

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by var1016

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Exasperated by Vista (now even worse with SP1) I have bought an OEM XP home version. The computer was bought new last October: HP Pavilion,AMD64 2 x 2.2GHz, 2MB ram and Vista. HP says I can install XP on the computer and have helpfully given me the necessary drivers.

Before I trash everything, I would just like your expert comments, for which I thank you in advance.

Paul

57 replies

by Former member

What do you need help in?

Please post back if you have anymore problems or questions.

by var1016

Thank you every much for your kind offer. No doubt you understand I am not a professional... Right, I don't understand the difference between OEM and Retail versions and would like to know if this difference affects the installation procedure. As I wrote I have been given the necessary drivers that I must load after the XP installation.

Thank you

Paul

by tintoman

in the functionality of the operating system, the difference is in the support for the product which in your case means that you will not get any support from microsoft for an oem product, in that case the support is meant to come from the system builder.
Furthermore OEM software is only supposed to be supplied to OEM system builders and installed only on a brand new or refurbished machine.

by older mycroft

That you off-load ALL the stuff that you want to keep (to external HDD, Flash Drive or burn to DVD) before you proceed with a fresh install of XP.

You'll of course require access to a USB floppy drive for the SATA drivers.

With an AMD64 + 2GB RAM it'll run quite comfortably thank you very much.

Bon Chance ! :)

by var1016

Thank you.

Er, what is SATA? HP didn't mention this. I have copied all my files onto a DVD and have all the drivers on a USB stick.

Thanks

Paul

by older mycroft

You need to install SATA drivers [u]as part of the XP install.[/u]

The installer will prompt you for SATA drivers, you respond by pressing 'F6' at the appropriate moment, the installer will then ask for the drivers, you then insert the floppy into the USB floppy drive.

Then the XP installer carries on as usual.

If you didn't install the SATA drivers, the installer would timeout with the request, then carry on to the end of the installation routine. However, when you removed the XP installer disc and rebooted - the boot would FAIL because XP wouldn't be able to read from its own SATA HDD.

There are many users that have fallen foul of this, thinking the installation was OK because it ran to the end and 'completed'.

XP cannot load SATA drivers from any media except a 3.5in floppy. (Although I have heard of instances where it CAN be done with a CD).

You'll need to go to the HP website and download the SATA drivers for your system.

by tintoman

once again from Old Mycroft, personally I admit to being a little disappointed that so many people hate Vista so much, I have been using it since pre-release and have no issues at all with it.
However if you can't tolerate it I'm sure you will have no problem with XP - one thought struck me though - you appear to be not in the IT business so how did you come by an OEM installation CD for XP home?

by willcomp

OEM versions are widely sold by on-line merchants such as Newegg, Directron, and mWave.

by tintoman

for that of course I am well aware that OEM software is readily available from various suppliers but I am making the point that the almost the entire IT industry seems to hold the whole licensing strategy in contempt.

by var1016

Vista? Grrr; brand new computer, Vista pre-installed and I might as well have thrown my peripherals in the dustbin given the grief I had to get them to run. AFter SP1 I have had my first crash - and th computer is so slow... That's it - finished.

In reply to your question I bought the OEM XP on ebay from America - there are thousands on offer on the net all around the world. Mine comes in a sealed package from a bloke with good feedback so it should be fine - cost me $91 delivery included to France - I cannot wait for it to arrive! (Vista is bad enough - in French it's even worse!)

Paul

by tintoman

Despite my continuous flaming of illicit sales of software I fell into the ebay trap myself before I found myself a legitimate supplier, 5 copies of XP later I found out they were all fake.
I hope this is not the case for you

by dumphrey

The performance is sub par, even with a good vid card and a lot of ram. Vista works well only on dual/multi core in my experience.

by var1016

Thanks, but I have dual core processor!

Paul

by willcomp

You may need F6 drivers for SATA controller to install XP. That can be tricky unless you have a floppy drive.

If you have a VIA chipset motherboard, F6 drivers will be required. Some nVidia chipsets require them, some don't. I'm not familar with ATI/AMD chipsets.

by var1016

Thank you.

HP sent three drivers, one for the chipset, one for graphics and one for audio; the bloke said that these were all I need.

Paul

by Former member

Loaded on your xp,, please re-post back to us to say how well everything is doing or if there are any problems.

Please post back if you have anymore problems or questions.

by dumphrey

I would grab a network card driver. Shouldn't need it, but better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it.

by willcomp

In case I missed it in all the banter posted in this thread, what is the model of your PC?

May can help with SATA drivers once I know what the system specs are.

by var1016

Thank you.

I shall be on my own then as HP said they will not support the machine if I remove the OS and MS support is hardly worth the time it takes to type M$ in my limited experience.

All I can say is that I ran my old Everex PC with XP for five years; I never had one blue screen of death, the worst I ever had was the occasional "hang" which restarting always cured. It was great to fire it up again and see how fast it was!

Thanks again,
Paul

by var1016

Thanks! I hope so too, but the seller has decent feedback, and I have Paypal protection too.

If he has supplied a fake, then ebay will get a large rocket from me and of course so will he!

Paul

by tintoman

When I reported this to Mr Microsoft he couldn't give a rat's ass!!
That's a shock isn't it?

by var1016

You are only the second person I have heard using that expression - are you Australian??

As for Mr Microsoft, the fact he couldn't give a rat's ass is no surprise, no surprise at all!

Paul

by tintoman

I am english but Auntie Beth won't let me say what I normally say, I think I heard that in a low budget American flick some time ago

by tintoman

Make sure you are not going to get hammered with import duty on this
I bought some T shirts from Billy boy Gates and the UPS guy demanded 36 f***ing quid on arrival.
P.S I cant buy OEM XP home for that price and I AM an OEM system builder!!!

by var1016

Thanks again.

Looks like I'm stuffed: I have no floppy disk drive, and the one on my old computer never seemed to work properly - disks that read fine on other machines would not read on it. SO I presume from what you say that a USB key is no use? Funny HP didn't mention this.

Paul

by tintoman

However if this guy is lucky enough to get XP with SP2 version C this will not be an issue

by var1016

HP says that if I change from SATA to IDE in the bios then I can install XP without problems; any comments please?

Thanks

by older mycroft

That's razor-sharp wit.

...on the odd occasion that it makes an appearance these days! :D

by jamesrl

Hard drives today are either SATA or IDE, not both.

If you put an IDE drive in the computer and installed XP on it, you could then install the drivers for SATA later - if your computer, like mine, will run with both. But that would mean buying a new hard drive. And since SATA is faster than IDE it would mean a compromise in performance too.

James

by dumphrey

should have run at least decently for you... its very usable on a single core, just slow...
that being said, XP should be faster.

by dumphrey

to run sata drives AS IF they were IDE. It runs them at IDE speeds, but it allows you to install XP, install sata drivers, then switch to native sata mode. brilliant really.

by var1016

Thank you again. There will be a delay, because I am going away for a month at the end of the week and I doubt I'll have time before then, but I shall not forget!

Paul

by var1016

Thank you.

I have a problem with drivers: HP has given me drivers for chipset, graphics and audio. Now I find it very difficult to establish what drivers I need - I cannot even find the specs for the computer apart from some basic stuff. For example I went to HP's site and they ooly offer SATA drivers for Vista and of course I want them for XP. NVidia's site was very confusing and I searched under SATA drivers...

Paul

by var1016

Thanks for the earlier post about this. I guess that this is what HP was referring to with the instruction to change this in the Bios.

I also found a reference to "nLite" which enables one apparently to "slipstream" drivers into the install files and also do lots of other useful mods. I have downloaded the software but doubt I'll understand it properly!

Paul

by wesley.chin

I would not even try it. Not with 2 MB of RAM in any case. HP really gyped you. You need at least 1GB for Vista. 2GB is even better. For XP, more than 512MB in my experience. 1GB is even better.

by var1016

Vista has scrambled my brains obviously...

Even my first computer had 8MB (and a 500MB hard drive too with Pentium 75MHz...)

Thanks for pointing that out

Paul

by thechas

It looks like you have all the advice you need for installing XP.

If it was not covered, the primary difference for the OEM version of XP is the limitations of the license agreement. Per the EULA, that copy of XP is now tied to the hardware in your laptop and cannot be used on a different PC.

I am curious however as to what problems you have had with Vista. And, how SP1 made things worse.

Chas

by var1016

Yes thanks, I think I am ready to go now (except I would like to know how to find the SATA drivers).

Problems? I bought the computer new six months ago: scanner wouldn't work, printer as well also most of my software. I quite like the look of Vista, but I hate its nannying - OF COURSE I want to do XXX otherwise I wouldn't have selected it! Irritating. Took many emails and many hours to get the scanner working and even then sometimes it would refuse - system restore would get that back. AFter SP1 - all restore points deleted - no scanner. I plugged scanner into old PC (XP) which I had cleared and reinstalled. All worked in a few minutes. (Internet brilliant: just plug in the Ethernet cable and your on-line! And following SP1 had my first crash yesterday. And it takes even longer now to start up - after the welcome screen (long enough before) this is supposed to be a fairly fast computer; perhaps one needs a Cray for Vista! I have removed the bloatware and run CCleaner, Regcure, Adaware, Spybot regularly. Vista is no good.

Finally, I posted this on one of my blogs (it came from Slashdot:

"...there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly."

by Former member

On the HP computers manufactured since 2007 (February) the bios maps Sata into IDE space.

I had no problem installing on Sata drives in an HP dv9225 nor an HP dv9700 cto without sata drivers. Just stuck the install disk into the CD Rom and installed.

by var1016

Thanks.

Its a HP Pavilion, model no is a6113.fr (France)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+, NVidia Geforce 8400GS, 2GB ram. I cannot find the details of the hard drive but I know it is 300GB.

Paul

by willcomp

Per HP specs, you have an nVidia 6150SE nForce 430 chipset.

Here are chipset drivers which include SATA drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp32_8.26_11.09.html

You should not need F6 SATA drivers to install XP on an nForce 430 based system without a RAID arary.

Video card is nVidia GeForce 8400GS and drivers are here if you need them:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

Hard disk specs are irrevalent other than it's SATA.

by var1016

Brilliant, thank you very much.

I am still waiting for the XP to arrive, so probably I will do the installation in a month's time when I get back from my trip to England.

Best wishes

Paul

by var1016

Thanks, but I have already visited this site: they offer drivers for Vista 64bit or Vista and of course I want XP!

Paul

by var1016

Thank you. I have downloaded them - but can I be sure that they will work with my HDD? Perhaps they are generic?

Paul

by Former member

Since you do not have the drivers these are the only ones i can find, so far.
Hope all goes well.

Please post back if you have anymore problems or questions.

by var1016

A big thank you to everyone who offered advice. This evening I installed my OEM (2002 version) XP. Everything went perfectly: there were no SATA/IDE issues - in fact no issues at all. Everything worked first time, and I have installed SP3, again without any trouble at all. And the computer is now so fast.

Goodbye VISTA - for ever!

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