tony houghton

I'm trying to install XP on a laptop (as subject) but the installer
can't find the hard drive. It's got an Intel 945GM/82801*/ICH7 chipset
so I created an "F6 floppy" from f6flpy32.zip downloaded from Intel, but
even using that the XP installer still can't find the HD. The disc has
SP2 slipstreamed. I've installed the same version on a desktop PC with a
fairly similar chipset and that worked fine even without an F6 floppy.
Any ideas?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

trevor best

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:50:25 +0000 (UTC)

Is it SATA? Can you get to the BIOS and switch it to normal IDE mode?
Install SATA later then switch it back.

--
Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts -
for support rather than illumination.

tony houghton

In <20070820232940.0a6d8c6c@voyager>,

Thanks, that sorted it. It's still a bit of a mystery though:

* Why didn't loading the driver from floppy work?

* Why didn't I have the same problem with the similar chipset in my
desktop, which is also configured to SATA in the BIOS?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

clint sharp

In message <slrnfcjvkh.fgt.h@realh.co.uk>, Tony Houghton <h@realh.co.uk>
writes


Yes, there's a mode setting in the BIOS setup to do with the SATA drive.
I can't remember what it is but the options are pretty sparse in that
setup so it will be easy to find. Something like Native mode and
compatibility mode IIRC.
--
Clint Sharp

trevor best

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:53:00 +0000 (UTC)

More of a mystery, why does a 21st century operating system
require a floppy?

I've always thought there's something strange about laptops, can never
quite put my finger on it. I can get a laptop that is more powerful in
each respect (CPU, disk speed, RAM) than a desktop then pit them
against each other and the desktop still wins.

--
People say I'm old fashioned.
That's poppy****!

tony houghton

In <20070821223908.770e571b@voyager>,


It's not properly sorted after all :-(. Even though I've installed the
relevant Intel drivers Windows won't boot if I reenable SATA in the
BIOS. I think HP have nobbled the chips so they won't work with standard
Windows drivers (but they do work with Linux). The LAN doesn't work in
XP either even though it's Intel. They've gone so far though that even
drivers downloaded from HP's support page for the model aren't
compatible with it! Seeing as the version of Vista supplied started to
eat itself after less than a day's use and the Recovery disc doesn't
work, this laptop actually isn't compatible with any version of Windows at all!

As well as the above problems, this laptop feels sluggish in Linux too.
It even feels slower than my own laptop despite having a 1.7GHz Core Duo
vs a 1.4GHz Pentium-M, and surely the 120GB HD must be faster than mine
which is only 20GB IIRC.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

trevor best

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:30:08 +0000 (UTC)


Wow! Send it back, clearly not fit for the purpose it was sold for. I
find that strange as I have a DV6000 series, it did have Vista Home
Premium on it and I had the same no disk in XP Setup. Not knowing
about the BIOS trick I installed Vista Ultimate as I need to connect to
a domain at work. I dual boot with Ubuntu and it runs fine, even runs
Beryl nicely (GF Go 7400).

A friend of mine got almost the same model as me, DV6000 series but his
is the AMD chipped one. XP installed OK on that without disabling SATA.
Took him a bit of effort finding the drivers for everything else but
there was no faffing around like you had with Intel chipsets.

You might want to swap yours out for a similar spec AMD model.

--
People say I'm old fashioned.
That's poppy****!

tony houghton

In <20070822015854.4f56a73e@voyager>,

It's not mine so I can't take it back. Not sure what I'd do if it were
mine; probably see if I could get a refund for Windows (apparently you
only get about a paltry tenner each for Windows and Works though) and
then get a full refund if they refused. It seems like quite a nice
machine when it's got a working OS on it. I haven't got a copy of Vista
or I would have tried that, but I doubt the laptop's licence key would
be valid for an ordinary version anyway. I had to resort to calling HP.
After about an hour of bullshitting each other (him not admitting he
doesn't know anything about computers, he's just a telephone operator in
an Indian call center reading from a script, me not admitting I
resized/moved the partitions to install Linux on it [1]) I finally got
him to get a replacement recovery disc sent out to me, but I thought I'd
better waste and hour and let him think it was his idea instead of
suggesting that in the first place! Luckily I managed to find an 01
number via saynoto0870.co.uk and I've got loads of free minutes on my mobile :-).

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, probably. Intel are the better
chips all round at the moment and always tend to have better drivers in
both Windows and Linux.

[1] Irrelevant IMO; if the recovery disc can't even restore to a
completely blank HD it's broken.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

clint sharp

In message <slrnfcs4kk.rn4.h@realh.co.uk>, Tony Houghton <h@realh.co.uk>
writes

Ha, the recovery disk singular? Does it boot?


AFAIR, the recovery disk is actually a set of two disks but it's been a
while since I used a recovery set so YMMV. One disk has the model
specific drivers on it and the recovery is not a standard Windows
install, the first disk preps the HDD and loads a set of drivers onto it
then initiates an install of windows from the second disk.

Agreed, I have a loathing for AMD chips, I'd rather have stable and
reliable than a few percentage points faster and cheaper. Certainly I'd
have to think long and hard before having one in any of my servers but
then I remember the shonky knock off AMD 386 chips that wouldn't run a
lot of software because they weren't fully compatible, then the 486
chips with half or less cache than the Intel equivalent (and almost
exactly half the performance MHz for MHz), then the dodgy Athlon chips
that expired in milliseconds if the heatsink wasn't liquid nitrogen
cooled the size of a semi detached house . So, on the whole, I'd rather
have a chip that I know will work thanks. Of course, you can buy one if
you so wish. Stick one in your laptop, it'll keep you warm.

HP have a nasty habit of putting every driver for a series of machines
on the download pages, there are some really odd hardware combinations
if you take the pages literally, you can get machines that have four
different NICs and five different graphics cards if you believe the
driver lists. If you enter the part number of the machine into the HP
drivers and downloads page you may get a better match of drivers for
your specific machine (for example, NC6120 gets you a longer list of
drivers than PG824ET#ABU which is a specific hardware specification).
Intel Gigabit NICs aren't supported by XP drivers either so that may
explain the lack of working NIC from a bare install.

May be teaching Granny to **** eggs here, but did you read the
do***entation and are you sure you have the correct disk(s)? Not saying
this applies to you but a fair number of hardware 'faults' I see are no
such thing, usually someone who 'knows about computers' screwing it up
or assuming it's faulty because it doesn't work the way they think it
should.
--
Clint Sharp

tony houghton

In <zNQUXPGb9ozGFwcB@clintsmc.demon.co.uk>,


They're not that bad. The earlier Athlons were a bit difficult to cool,
but later models are really quite efficient and S754 onwards have good
heatsink interfaces. All of them are more power efficient than P4s as
well as offering better value in terms of performance, and any
chipset/driver issues are negligible to most users in comparison to how
superior AMDs are to P4s in every other way. It's rumoured that many
high-end P4s in OEM systems are incapable of running at full speed for
more than a few seconds in warm ambient conditions because the overheat
protection is forced to kick in.

It says dv2000 on the badge over the screen so I tried that first, but
most of the drivers there were for AMD so obviously wrong. I found
dv2224ea on the label underneath and tried that. There are fewer
drivers, but most of them are incorrect too (including at least one for
AMD). I didn't think of trying the p/n.

It wasn't supplied with a recovery disc, just a partition (about 5.2GB,
but slightly less than a CD's worth was used up). I knew that might be
at risk from repartitioning for Linux so before I did anything else I
used "Recovery Manager" to create a CD. It only lets you do that once
apparently (alarm bells). I was a little surprised that it only created
one CD, considering it was supposed to contain a complete "Vasti"
installation. My laptop takes 2 or 3 discs to install XP using a version
of Ghost.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk