I have an HP pavilion S5100NX that has Windows XP Home installed. I'm an IT Dummy and only know enough to use a computer and occasionally foul something up. Most of the terms used such as BIOS etc. I don't know what they mean or how they work within a computer.
Having said that, there were a few times when I called HPs support with a serious problem and the person on the line said, something like, "uh oh, you need to do a complete system recovery. I know enough only that I'd have to go through a lot to back up all my files, email addys, desktop shortcuts and icons etc.
So I'd decline their generous suggestion that I go do that first and then they'd help me do a system recovery. So I'd start poking around, do a bit of online searching for help and VERY luckily, solve the problem myself.
But this time, I'm really stuck.
My hard drive eventually started to squeal and I new it was time to get another. So I saved all the important stuff to my slave drive. From there, I was given a completely new driver with XP loaded and ready to go. It was a relatively new drive that had a system recovery done to it. I saw it run on the donors computer and all looked just fine.
So I take out the old drive and plug in the new. I'm aware that the jumpers, master and slave have to be set correctly.
So when I do that, turn it on and I get the Compaq screen with a line at the bottom that says, "F1 Setup and F10 System recovery". But what happens is that this screen simply disappears and comes on again, round and round in a loop.
I've found that some problems can be solved by unplugging the strip connectors and plugging them back in to reset the contacts. No luck there but when I left the floppy unconnected, I got a screen with the title, "Award BIOS" , after the aforementioned screen lights up for a bit. On this screen, which is black with white text, is listed all the drives I have installed. the hard drive, secondary drive, DVD drive and floppy but there it says, "Floppy disks fail" Which figures, I have it disconnected.
At the bottom of that screen, it says,
Press F1 for setup, Press F2 to continue.
When I press F2, I get the Compaq screen again which simply comes back to the black screen.
When I press F1, I get A screen with graphics that says, at the top,
AwardBIOS Setup Utility with the drives listed along with some other data.
II can't go any further because it's asking me for a password. I don't recall initiating any passwords here, or anywhere to get my machine going. I did a search for "BIOS passwords" and after trying some 50 or more, still no luck, stuck in this screen.
I brought the drive back to the donor and all works fine on his machine. When I plug in my old drive, I get the same results as my new drive. The donor, unfortunately, is as computer unsavy as me.
I would have included screen shots but the files are too big. Don't know how to overcome that.
You can not take an XP install from one machine to another. XP has to be installed on the computer it will be run on.
You can use the donor hard drive, but you need to install it in the machine, then boot to YOUR recovery disc and format and install XP on the newly installed hard drive.
Thanks Squirrelnmoose. I have recovery disks that I made, as instructed, when I got the computer. XP was already loaded. I had used these once way back early in this computer's life. I did not get an XP CD as such, the program was already loaded.
Will these recovery disks load XP for me?
I invest online and really need my machine back asap. Right now, I'm using a borrowed one from a friend.
Yes the disk should put your computer, XP, back to new.
The drawback is that there have likely been many updates and security fixes since your system was new. So after the machine is running you'll want to open Internet Explorer and go to Windows update and get the latest for your machine. You will probably have to reboot and revisit the update many times before all current security fixes are installed.
Thanks, RockynBullwinkle, I'll give it a go. One last question. I'd heard a lot of bad about Vista in the early days so I put off getting a new machine. This one has Vista and seems to run OK but despite having a 64 bit triple core CPU and 3 Gigs of Ram, it runs no faster than my old machine. I tend to click on link after link trying to keep up with current events, (stock meltdown) and at about 20 web pages the screen freezes. Same as my old XP.
IF I bought a new Vista machine, could I use my old computer's recovery disks to piggyback XP onto the new drive?
I only know some of the current jargon because naturally, I started to look at buying a new machine. All the vendors say that Vista is a resource hog and the faster machines were needed just to make it at least as useful as the old XP.
If that's the case, what was the point of Vista? Aside from being very pretty, I see no advantages.
There has never been anything Wrong with Vista. (of course there have been bugs, like any OS)
The big issues have been manufactures supporting older devices. If you had something manufactured before Vista it was hit and miss if the mfg made a Vista compatible driver. It's harder to program for Vista. Since there is a huge XP customer base, manufactures have been slow to put resources into programming for Vista. (always about the $)
What makes it harder to program for is what also make it's more secure than previous Windows OS's.
Quote:
IF I bought a new Vista machine, could I use my old computer's recovery disks to piggyback XP onto the new drive?
No, you would have to buy XP.
If your system came with Vista, it will run fine and may be hard to find XP drivers for it.
Yes my XP out of the box runs faster than my Vista out of the box. If you want the fastest system, just install Windows 95.
My point being as new 'features' are addeed it has been historicly slower than the previous system. Windows 98 ran faster than XP on a CPU with less power and resources.
If you want to speed up Vista you can turn off some of the features that are enabled by default. Search indexing, sidebar and Aero Galss (the pretty stuff) are a few that can all be turned off and will give you a noticeable speed increase.
As far as the crashing, with many windows open. It could be many things, generally make sure your OS is up to date and you have the latest driver updates for you video card. Also making sure your browser (IE, Firefox, or Opera etc.) and Java is current.
Thanks once again. The learning curve is getting steeper with the links you provided. I once was quite afraid of computers. Now I don't know how I'd function without them. I'm putting off getting a blackberry though, I understand they can be addictive.
Well, I popped in the first recovery disc, (one of seven) and nothing happened. The machine still sits there doing nothing except take me to the BIOS setup screen which needs a password of which I have no idea what that is.
As mentioned, I had secured on line, some 50 or more possible, factory passwords and none of them work. What now?
