Advice Reformatting HP

[HardcoreRobot]

I promised my friend I would clean up his computer tomorrow - format the hard drive and install a fresh copy of Win2K. I have done this plenty of times with my own computers, but I built them myself so I have all the component drivers/documentation etc. I am worried that because his machine is an HP, I will have some problems. Does anybody have any advice for me? I would like to know also how to get into the bios so I can make sure that the cd drive is in the boot sequence. TIA

 

[BatmanNate]

Are you going to be using a restore CD? If not, do you have appropriate drivers for all the hardware? To get into the BIOS (i'm assuming it's one of those cheesy proprietary logo screens) try hitting F2.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

Well, the current OS is WinME. Ideally, I'd just erase everything on the computer and replace what was with 2K. I am also concerned about drivers...

 

[The Stigenator]

go into device manager (in system applet of the control panel) and note down stuff for the following:

Video card,
Sound Card
Modem (if he has one)
Network card (if he has one)
Firewire card (if he has one)
SCSI drivers (if has a SCSI system)

Down load those drivers for win2k and keep them seperate. When its done installing, put in teh drivers.

W2K would detect everything, if it doesnt ahve drivers put them in. Its a good idea to put in the latest drives. After you put the drivers in, just add SP2 On board.

Oh yeah one more thing..You might want to keep on hand the motherboard drivers (if an i815 mobo, download those drivers etc etc). However I wont install them unless necessary.

 

[oneeighty]

Shouldn't be a problem, but it depends on HP and if they have drivers for W2K that isn't natively recognized by the OS. First, go to the HP support website to see if there are drivers for that particular model.

Anyway, I've installed W2K on a Compaq 1200 series laptop with no problems; W2K detected everything. Then again on an HP 9000 series desktop that had a P4 1.5, we had to order the W2K drivers directly from hp b/c they weren't posted on the web or FTP yet.

 

[RossGr]

It may be hard to avoid the recsue disk. HP builds a proprietary system so do not be surprised if the rescue disk contains drivers you need to get going. Give it a try without, you can alway stick in the rescue disk and get back to ME. You should be able to install Win2K from there.

 

[RC5Bri]

I have done this with my dad's HP computer. What I did was to note everything before I reformatted the drive. Also, there were 3 recovery disks for the computer. 2 of them was used for a ghosted copy of the harddrive, the other one was a disk of misc. software and drivers. So, I was luckily able to get all the drivers of the 3rd HP disk. Although, the drivers were all hidden inside cryptic named zip files.

Just do a little preparation, and everything should be fine.