[TIGERE]

Well in an attempt to maybe take advantage of some possible hardware updates in Vista S1 ... offered through automatic update - I have just finished a system restore to use this computer ....

With S1 installed it just cycled through restart over and over - "Windows encountered a critical problem .... Will restart in 1 minute" - over and over ....

It is clear to me if I hope to get any use out of this 9205 HP laptop .... I have got to get Vista (Home Premium) off ... I am wide open for suggestions .....

Tigere

[Sam5150]

You could install another drive with XP Pro. That is what I did. It is like having 2 computers in one. I take the side cover off the computer and simply plug in the SATA connector t the drive I want to use.

[mphenterprises]

Hi Tigere and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




The Discussion to which you have posted your concern is in relation to the news article. I have branched your issue into its own Discussion. This will allow as many of our members as possible a chance to see and to respond to your question.

Now, in relation to your issue, I would strongly advise you read this Document by one of the Community's regular members, RGreen. {document:id=1097}. Once you read that, if you are still adamant about removing Vista, we can do our best to help you.

[mphenterprises]

sam5150 said:

>You could install another drive with XP Pro. That is what I did. It is like having 2 computers in one. I take the side cover off the computer and simply plug in the SATA connector t the drive I want to use.
>

Hi Sam and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




Please note that Tigere has a laptop, not a desktop. adding a second hard drive is not as simple in his or her case.

[cubbage]

I have done this about a dozen times for family & friends.


The first action is to determine if you have a legit copy of XP to install on the laptop. If you have gotten all of your OS's with a new box then they are OEM versions with do not allow you to install them on a different box. So if you do not have a legit copy then you will have to buy one. My recommendation is to buy a new hard drive for Amazon or Buy.com with then qualifies you to buy an OEM copy of XP since you are now a hardware installer.


The second step is to ensure that you have downloaded all of the drivers (XP) from the HP web site. You may have trouble finding them, if so call tech support and inform them that Vista will not run some of your programs an you would like the URL of the XP drivers for your laptop. So far I have found out the Dell, HP/Compaq and several of the other OEM's have them but dont advertise the fact. Once you have the URL make certain that the drivers are in fact for your laptop, of so you are not golden. Make certain that you have the drivers on a USB flash drive, USB external drive or burn them to CD/DVD. What I have done is to streamline them into a OEM XP install disk thereby making a new install disk (this allows me to have the drivers available during the XP install, including SATA drivers).


Third step is make certain that you have all of your data backed up. You may also want to image the Vista install on your laptop for full backup of the laptop. One extra step I have taken is to have an extra hard drive for laptop which I use to make the install of XP. I swap the drives, install XP on the new drive. Conversely you can also use a USB external drive and make it first boot disk in bios for the XP install & testing.


Once steps 1-3 are complete you are now ready to install XP. If all goes well you will have XP up an running in an hour or so. If XP complains about some of the drivers, double check you have the right ones. Remember that most of the hardware inside have two sets of drivers, one from the OEM and one from the actual manufacture of the seperate parts of hardware i.e. video driver from ATI, NVidia or Intel. Sometimes the manufactures drivers are more compatible with OS's then OEM's.


I have always been able to downgrade to XP from Vista everytime.

[rkinne01]

Have you tried repairing Vista from the CD? Insert the Vista Disk into CD rom, restart computer, watch for boot options (F8 or 10 usually), select the drive you placed the Vista DVD into, save, the computer should boot into Vista Install screen, you should see a repiar option on this screen if so select it. finally follow the on screen prompts.

[TIGERE]

First things first - Thank you MPHE for the redirect - and secondly for your reponse to this issue - I am currently reading the suggested article and estimating the risk ..
on the surface this should have been a good middle of the road unit with some fuzzies for the missus as well ... it is a Pav. 9205us - w/ 1gig ram ...Amd Turion TL 50 64x2 ... 1.6 ... and 6150 on board video .... however as it now appears that MS was determined to get to market and all articles I have read tend to support this - (all subsequent units are hitting the shelves with more memory and a step up in processor size ... ) this unit will need serious memory upgrades and serious surgery to the HP propretory crap before it will support itself.
My choices seem to be a wrestling match what ever I do .... now I know that under XP this unit will work ....it almost matches my desk top .... and I have had xp over 98 on another machine - with far less power - and it handled my average demand ... so the decision to is not without some thought - of course the SR1 debacle this morning pretty much iced the cake -
Aside from the average stuff office 03,IE7, a lite photo editing program, I have Datacad 10 soon to upgrade to 12, Caligari True Space, and Sketchup .With Sketchup I can not run it ... and rendering in Dcad is a bit slow but it is for client viewing and brainstorming the real stuff I do in the desktop ...

but this poor thing is a fat kid run amuck .... to much candy and cake .... a clean install seems feasible in the face of all the seeming endless annoyances I am encountering .... but again I am defintely open for suggestions ....

Thanks again and to otherr reponders esp. cubbage

Tigere

[rgreen4]

Tigere - this unit is what I call a transition unit. It came out about the time that XP was coming off pre-installed and Vista was coming on. This particular model only came with Vista, but others in the dv9000 series came with XP. One would think you could simply go back and install XP on this machine and merrily go on your way. Such may not be the case however.
Subsequent to my generating the document From Vista to XP, other information on these machines came to light. As a result of some investigation and experimentation in attempting to solve a posting from another member some months back, I generated this document Problems Installing XP with Intel 82801 AHCI.|d-1670]

Lets try the easy road first - start you laptop and as soon as the POST stops (the display screen at the beginning) disappears, press and hold F8 to boot into safe mode. This will look very different and may even be called ugly, but it is very basic. Once the machine has completed booting and you are looking at a primitive desktop, your icons should all be there, but no side bar nor background image. Click on the Start button and then Control Panel. You will see a very different Control Panel, the classic view, but you want to click on Programs and Features and then installed updates. Locate Service Pack 1 on the list of updates, highlight it and then click on uninstall at the top.

If this fails, then your machine should have come with a recovery partition. You should have also been prompted to burn Recovery DVD's when you initially set up the machine.

If you have not, you may still be able to utilize the Recovery Manager on this machine, here is an excerpt from the HP page:

Restore the PC to its original condition with the HP Recovery Manager if Windows Vista is not accessible

If
the PC cannot launch into Windows, it may still be possible to use the
HP Recovery Manager on the hard drive to restore the computer to the
original operating condition by following the steps below.

# Press the Power button to start the PC and immediately press the {font:Courier}F11{font} key to open the HP Recovery Manager.

#* If the HP Recovery Manager can access the hard drive, a prompt is displayed to backup the user files before beginning the recovery. Follow any on-screen instructions.

#* If the HP Recovery Manager cannot access the hard drive to fix any system errors, use the set of recovery discs to recover the hard drive to its original condition.

If this does not work, and the F11 option will not open the Recovery Manager, then your only other option is to order the recovery discs from HP. Here is a [document|d-1107] generated on this topic by mphenterprises.

If you want more information about the [HP Recovery Manager just follow that link.
Regardless, the recovery programs will return the laptop to the factory shipped condition, which means that anything you installed, programs and data will be gone. If there is critical data, then order a suitable SATA laptop drive and install in drive bay one. This means that you only have two options to reinstall, the recovery DVD's you burned, or order a set from HP. They are about $25 I believe if ordered after purchase of the machine. Your machine should have the second drive bay, but it only came with one drive. I do not know if the machine shipped with the drive tray and screws in the second bay or not. If it did, you can then install the original drive in drive bay 2 and copy the data off once you have the OS on the new drive in bay 1.
If there is no critical data or if you have (hopefully) a current backup, then you can forgo that step.
I know this is a lot of information and probably like trying to take a drink from a fire hose, but this occasionally happens when doing a major upgrade like installing SP1. Before upgrading my three machines to SP1, I generated a clone of each of the system drives, but that is another topic.

Once you get the system back to where it is supposed to be, you should open a new discussion about ways to improve the processing speed of the machine. I believe there are some steps that can be taken, but one thing at a time.

[TIGERE]

RG4 -

Thank you for your post ... while it may seem that Vista is the problem the fact is, as you pointed out, "transition" and several things converging on the same spot - too little machine, too much o/s and too little know how.

As an older newbie I have to depend on the manufacturer for honesty and integrity ... I read the specs very carefully and based on what I knew, thought it would handle most of what I had - and on paper it should. Surely they wouldn't offer it if they knew it wouldn't fly ... wrooooong !!!!!

Another aggravant which plays an important part here is the fact that we travel back and forth between CA. and AZ. - so the machine sat for some time before I really had time to run it through its paces and of course its warranty period - at one point we had an option of trading the unit for a Compaq - w/ XP Pro - but I thought surely these guys (HP&MS) would ramp up and maybe get Vista into the real world ... (this was in response to my question to them (HP) - "can we reload XP on this series ?"...) I called a shop and inquired if they had had success reloading XP on Vista machines too which they responded - about 50/50 .... And it was about that same time that I felt that cold chill come over me - "I am sooooooooooooo screwed ....." ... so as you point out "maybe, maybe not."

I am also sitting on several hundred dollars of older but good peripherals: An HP 6200 scanner, Hp1220 w/f printer (for 11x17 house plans) an 1740 Samsung printer and an HP All in One - with limited or no interface. Not to mention this ugly step child laptop ...which does not play well with others.

I am very grateful to this forum for the support you and others have provided ... and have printed them out. So in the immortal words of Buzz Light Year - "to infinity and beyond!" Or perhaps better - Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid leaping off the cliff edge - " Ooooooh s!!!!!

Tigere

[rtfire1]

i think RG4 post is the way to go. I had a friend that had that problem with hp. He was told his laptop could not run xp due to driver issues. He bought xp pro and installed it any way. he has not had any issues other then sound sometime not working right.

[rgreen4]

Tigere - I think we can solve most of the issues. I feel sure that you probably still have Norton's Internet Security loaded on your machine, am I right?

[TIGERE]

No actually I have a strong aversion to Norton and removed it and am using ESET on all three of my units ....

[TIGERE]

This is pretty much what they (HP) told me although there was some reference to bios compatibility as well as drivers ....

[rgreen4]

Actually, drivers would not be the problem, but it's harder to explain to someone that they cannot change the setting of the AHCI disk controller for SATA drives in the BIOS. Most would say - Huh?

The reason I asked about Norton's is that there have been many reported problems with Norton's and SP1 install, because of the way that Norton's integrated itself into the actual OS kernel - SP1 prevents that, but Norton's also prevents SP1, soft of like some viruses, which is why many on the forum do not like either Norton's or McAfee, but the layered approach.

Our next step may be to see what the physical arrangements on your machine really are. If you have a very small phillips screwdriver, you will find three access panels on the bottom of the machine. The center panel is held in place with two very small screws, a Phillps #1 or #0 would work best. Loosen those screws, they do not come out of the panel, and lift the panel. If you look closely in the corners you will see two little images that look like memory modules, because that's what's behind the panel, along with the MB battery and I think the wireless module. On the memory modules are little stickers, what I am looking for is an HP part number that is nine digits, such as 446495-001 (which happens to be my memory module.

Next, replace that cover and remove the left hand cover which should have a raised "2" on it and small HD symbols showing on it. I am interested in find out if it is a totally empty bay or has the adapter,metal carrier for a HD and the four small screws in there. I am guessing it's empty, but it would be nice to know one way or another as it may determine our options.

Here is a link to the memory module changing proceedure. Here is a link to the drives manual.

Do you have recovery DVD's?

[rtfire1]

I know what you are saying there

[TIGERE]

Curses !!! My computer tools are in AZ . And have no small enough screw drivers here - stand by will hasten to Radio Shack and get a set ..... '

[stinkball]

It is pretty funny (of course it wasn't at the time) that when I bought a Dell C521 in February 2007 with Vista HP already loaded on it, there was some software loaded by Dell that was NOT Vista ready. After some months of waiting the problem was fixed ........I now suddenly have a popup window that states my graphics card (installed by Dell) is not compatible.. I have went online to card manufactuer.....microsoft update .....no solution. I have noticed no change in the performance of the card.....works like it should but everytime I log on I get the message.......unimpressed by both Dell and Vista right from the start.

[rgreen4]

Looking at the users manual for your machine, you have an integrated Nvidia GeForce 6150 video chip on the motherboard. The latest driver update is dated 1/26/07, which I'm sure is the one your machine came with.

Your only way to improve is to install a separate video card and disable the onboard video in the BIOS. Unfortunately the slim case limits your options because a full height card will not fit. This is why I feel the slim cases are not recommended for consumer use, yet both Dell and HP still put them out - they should have a black box warning on the box that you have limited abilities to upgrade the computer.

There are eight Nvidia low-profile cards in the GeForce 8xxx series on Newegg's website including this one by Jatron. I know nothing about this manufacturer or card but it is one of the few low-profile cards with a fan and has fairly good consumer ratings with 21 ratings. The 8400 chip should support Vista without any problems as it is much more powerful than the 6150, and the separate card has it's own base memory. Check out this one and the others. Read the reviews, they are helpful.

[TIGERE]

I have been pounding the HP site to get my head around exactly what I have ... so of course I am very interested in a users manual - I have entered my computer :9205us , removed and encountered a page full of PDFs ... so its a bit of a wade .... as you asked I have since removed the back covers and it appears there is space for another HDD ... ???? and the memory modules are tagged "hp spare 432969 .001 " an interesting thing when I go to device manager the HDD is listed as an SCSI .... where did you access the users manual ... (god only knows where the one that came with the unit is .....

By the way - since it appears we went to the same place did you notice the XP stuff associated with this PC model .... is it possible to upload pictures on this site


?




Edited by MPHEnterprises - Please do not post your personal information within the forums for your own security and privacy.

[rgreen4]

First the number you listed is your product number not you serial number - BUT - never post the serial number.

HP does not print a single manual nor do they ship one with the PC. The only place the manuals are available are on the page you were on. They accumulate the various manuals for features that apply to a particular model under that model. If you download all the applicable manuals and print them out (two sided printing) they will nearly fill a 1" notebook. I have such a notebook for my dv9500t. The next time you want to get there if you didn't bookmark it is to enter pavilion dv9205us and it should take you right there.

In the second drive bay you did not mention the presence of a drive tray, connector or package of 4 screws. You should have seen a connector in the bay. It would help if you could put in a second drive, but not critical. You can later if you want.

Now the two critical questions that need to be answered before we proceed -

1. Did you burn the recovery DVD's when you first got the notebook?

2. Do you have any critical critical or important data on the drive that is not backed up?

I have done some research on the memory modules, and while I do not fully understand the HP numbers, the memory modules for notebooks with AMD CPU's are different for Intel CPU's although the specs are identical. The numbers for the 1GB modules for the Intel 9000 series notebooks are different from the Intel 9500 series (mine) even though the specs are the same. It could do with factories and suppliers, some companies do that. The 1GB modules for your machine are 432970-001. HP wants ungodly prices for their memory modules - $669.61 ea for the 432970-001, but modules that meet the specifications can be found on Newegg for $50 for 2 1GB modules. We can cover the search for them later.

Yes, it is possible to upload pictures on this site. For example this is a scan of one of my notebooks memory modules - probably would work fine in yours.

This is actually the backside showing the original Mfg sticker, the HP part no. sticker is on the other side.