Installing store bought XP on HP machines

Hello All,

My HP recovery discs got corrupted. I read around about making new set by moving/renaming HPCD.sys and it didn't work. I contacted HP to get new set of discs and they want to me charge equivalent to USD50. I am in no mood to pay them this much sum.

A friend of mine has a store bought XP CD and I have trial version of XP. I was wondering if I install using any of these CDs and use XP key that my HP machine came with, will it fly? Has anyone tried it? Whats the result?

Plus, I must mention that my HP came with Swedish OS and the discs I have are English OS.

Thanks in advance for all expert comments.

 

What is the model of your notebook?

The key won't work with a retail version. All codes on the bottom side of your notebook are OEM.

 

Apologies for not mentioning it earlier, its a Swedish desktop but since I didn't find any forum that discussed this top as extensively as here, I posted here.

 

You could modify your store bought XP CD with the OEMBIOS method:
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/29/
making it into a HP WinXP CD. You might as well go play with nlite and/or RyanVM's Update Pack while you're at it.

 

I have a similar problem, my F756 NR was running Vista, but because of some annoying problems with Vista I tried to install an XP (a corporate version) and now it seems impossible to get drivers for almost everything.

Anyone who has some advice? Or should we just accept that a HP laptop of 2008 is not compatible with an OS that is still widely in use and supported by Microsoft?

Help from Hp service turned out not to work, apparently they cannot offer a set of drivers for their own product...

Grumpy

 

An update on the problem I encountered:

After installing an external (non HP) XP on my F756NR laptop, because of ongoing problems with Vista/Internet Explorer, I had a few chat sessions with people from HP Customer Care. They are very friendly, that's true...

No less than 2 times I received a list of drivers to download and install, but after that my laptop was still not working normal.

Later I discovered on the website of HP that they don't support downgrading to XP on laptops that are originally installed with Vista. Something that apparently was not known in Customer Care, or they could've warned me!

And not only laptops, I ran into a similar problem with the older Compaq 4410 desktop of an American, who lives close by, in Iloilo City (Philippines).

It seems impossible to install another version of XP, without using brute hackers-force.
Just format the HD and install an OS you like doesn't work. All you are allowed to do is just run recovery disks and start again from scratch with downloads of tons of updates etc, to end up with the same problems.

So my conclusion is that HP/Compaq is a company that wants to keep tight control over the computer you buy and pay for!
Also that you simply can forget that it's compatible with fully supported and by many people preferred operating systems, such as XP or some nice Linux version.

By doing so, HP could be suspected of being under the blankets with Microsoft...

For me it's clear, no more Compaq PC's, desktops or laptops for me any more!

I'll look for the more "generic' ones I can use the way I like...

Because I'm (in the eyes of others) already a computer-savvy guy, quite often I am asked for a buying advice. Guess what brand I will not longer recommend...

Good luck with your HP problems... I've had it for now with HP/Compaq.

Grumpy