DV9207us downgrade OS to XP Media Center 2005

I bought a brand new dv9207us from compUSA.com recently. It's a feature rich hardware with all kinds of periferals and interfaces. But Vista performs really bad with 1GB RAM. Just the OS takes more than 50% of memory and the available memory is almost 0% ! So any application runs pretty slow. So I decided to downgrade this machine to XP Media Center 2005. Here is the detailed step-by-step procedure I have followed. Hope this information will be useful to every one planning to install XP on this hardware.

Preparation
a) Download all drivers and HP softwares for XP from the HP site
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3224058&lang=en

b) Copy the driver for SATA controller for your hard disk into a floppy disk using the program "Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver" from the above site

b) Make sure you have a USB floppy drive

Procedure
1. Repartition your C drive using GParted or any other tool to create an additional drive D and format the drive D.

2. Connect the USB floppy drive to your machine and insert the floppy disk that you prepared above. You need to do this because dv9207 does not come with a floppy drive

3. Insert the operating system CD and Power On the notebook to boot from the CD (Install the XP on your D drive).
4. At the very beginning of the operating system installation, the following prompt is displayed at the bottom of the screen: "Press F6 if you need to install a SCSI or RAID driver...." When the prompt is displayed, press F6.
5. Later in the operating system installation, you are notified that a mass storage device could not be detected. When this notification occurs, press S (S=Specify Additional Device).
6. When prompted, insert the diskette that was created from the SoftPaq files, and then press Enter.
7. Select "Intel 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH7M)" and press Enter.
8. Continue with the operating system installation, as prompted.

9. Load all required drivers for your machine from the HP site given above untill all devices in your machine's Device Manager are loaded.

In order to make the TV tuner working, Install the DVD creator software from C drive (Vista Installation). This is required because Windows Media Center requires a Video decoder from this installation.

You may install all other softwares provided by HP from drive C because these are available under your Vista Drive under C:\sw... as installable programs.

At this point you will have all the featres of your dv9207us on XP Media Center 2005. I love the Media Center features on this new installation!!

Good Luck!

 

Is Media Center 2005 actually better on the dv9200 series than XP Professional, if you have the tv tuner?
Has anyone tried comparing the two versions of XP on the notebook?

 

I believe MCE is on top of Pro. So it would be a better choice for Media PC or notebook. Performance wise both would be the same.

 

I heard Media Center Edition 2005 was on top of Home Edition. You can connect to domains with Pro, but not with Home or Media Center Edition.
I would prefer Pro, but I want all the features of Media Center Edition since I have a notebook with Digital TV Tuner. I don't know if I'll be able to get everything to work as well with Pro as it will with Media Center Edition. Hp told me the restore cd's for dv9000's would not work on the dv9200's, so no XP Home, MCE, or Pro are available for this notebook so I have to dick with getting the obsure drivers installed in the correct order.

 

This is an excerpt from another discussion thread about MCE vs Pro vs Home. A MS rep says the following in a chat:

Windows XP pro vs Windows Media center PC vs Windows XP home
by padushka - 12/15/05 4:32 AM
In reply to: Finally found a useful quote. by JKBurton
Copied from online chat discussion with Win Media Center expert from Microsoft:

Transcript: Windows Media Center Edition, October 21
Published: October 26, 2004

Introduction

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Media Center chat!

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Today we are answering your questions about Media Center.

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Before we begin, I would like to begin by posting the chat rules and instructions for customers:

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Now, I'll have our hosts for the chat today introduce themselves:

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
I'm Andrew Brown, and I'm the MVP Lead for Media Center and the moderator for this chat.
-------------------------------------------

BillD_MS (Expert):
Q: is media center edition professional or home/
A: Windows Media Center Edition is built on Windows XP Profession Service Pack 2
-----------------------------------------------------

FULL STOP!!!!

 

So it's just missing the cool PVR applications which are useful for people with tv tuners?

 

Did you have any issues with "framedyn.dll" or "srclient.dll"?
I'm trying to figure out why I'm having a $%%#% problem ???

I am in unattended installation mode.

thanks,

 

Why do you even listen to HP? All of us here who downgraded to XP use the files/drivers for the dv9000t. Are these not the same things that are on the dv9000t restore disk?

 

Yea, I built myself a MCE OEM install cd that auto preactivates and tests good with Microsnot so I don't have to deal with not being able to get my updates. I only had to inject some files into a retail cd from a restore cd and make a couple of small changes. It works fine for XP, but my MCE 2005 is having a bit of a problem and I don't know exactly why? I have a slipstreamed copy of MCE 2005 with all the March updates, so I'm gonna try that one next.

The Restore CD for XP rebuilds the QuickPlay Direct Partitian and sticks some hidden code in the Master Boot Record so that QuickPlay Direct works properly. That was the only reason I wanted a System Restore DVD for my model.

Installing the drivers is not a problem.

 

I might have jumped to conclusion too soon. I dual boot now, and I can't find a conexant audio driver that supports SPDIF in XP. Perhaps HP was correct in telling you that the recovery disk for the dv9000t would not work on the dv92xx series.

 

I just installed everything from scratch and made backup images. You can fix that, easy.

 

Hi, I also have an dv9207 laptop with Vista Home Premium on it... recently downgraded to XP Professional, and now I lost all of my drivers. How are you guys getting all the drivers for XP? I currently need quite a few drivers, such as my Conexant audio driver and power saving software... etc. to name a few. Help please!

 

I have sucussfully downgraded to XP MCE 2005 but I am having a problem with the LAN chipset. I have tried the drivers on the website to no success. Is anyone else having this problem?