Vista downgrade to XP, installed Quick Play now computer wont boot?

I followed this to install quick play: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=108284&highlight=dv2000t+direct+play

Now my computer wont boot into windows, it just hangs after bios with a blinking "_"

I really do not want to install windows for the ... 5th time in 2 days...

Maybe this computer just shouldnt have XP on it...

 

Hmm... that sucks.

There's a QuickPlay MBR fix available at ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34444.exe , but it needs to be installed from Windows, and is to fix another problem, so that seems unlikely to help.

My advice would be to boot from the XP CD, go into Recovery Console, run a FixMBR, and see if you can then boot into Windows. If so, Windows will be back, but likely the Quickplay boot partition won't work. IF that's the case, then try the fix for that issue I linked above.

Good luck.

 

How do I get into Recover console when I am booting from cd?

What is FixMBR and how do I get to it?

 

I ran that but it still hangs after bios...

 

Should I just screw messing around with XP and suck it up with vista?

 

It still hangs after BIOS? What model notebook do you have? I would try updating (or "down"dating) the BIOS to a pre-Vista version. Hopefully, that can be done with a USB key or similar device without having to get into Windows. Some others have mentioned issues with XP (or at least Quickplay) with the new Vista BIOS.

 

Can you give me a quick bios updating/downdating guide and which BIOS you would reccomend switching too?

 

What model notebook do you have?

 

It is a dv2000t

 

Okay, since you can't get into Window, flashing the BIOS is a little tricky.

First, grab Phlash16 from here.

Then grab the F.12 BIOS from here .

Use WinRAR (or a similar program) to extract the BIOS file you downloaded. You'll get a file named 30B2F12_WIN.exe . Now use WinRAR again to extract the contents of that file into its own directory.

The important file is named 30B2F12.wph . Copy that along with the extracted Phlash16 program to some form of bootable disk. Since you don't have a floppy drive, you'll need to either burn to a bootable CD, or make a bootable USB key for this (and if using USB key you may need to enable USB booting in the BIOS). The easiest thing I can think of is to use Nero or something to create a bootable CD and place the files there.

Boot to whatever device you created and run "phlash16 30B2F12.wph". Hopefully, it will load the F.12 BIOS for you, and all will be well.

Unfortunately, HP only offers the WinPhlash program, not the DOS one, so there's a chance the Phlash16 program I linked from Tyan won't work with the HP BIOS... but I think it should.

Anyway, post back with the results.

 

I just reinstalled vista so I can get in windows in that. I just got a hold of the new media center XP DVD installer. I hope that has the SATA drivers on it? Or should I slipstream them into that? Can I change the bios from inside vista?

 

You might be able to use the HP installer to flash your BIOS. It might work easily or you may need to download the latest Vista BIOS to get the Vista-compatible flash program. In any case, I'm not totally convinced that's the issue, but it's one thing that some people have brought up in other discussions here as far as issues with going back to XP and Quick Play.

The XP Media Center DVD probably doesn't have the SATA drivers on it, so you'll want to either slipstream or urn off native SATA mode in the BIOS.

 

Does turning Sata off in the bios mess anything up? Whats the benefit of it being on?

 

It doesn't screw anything up. It just makes the hard drive appear to Windows as a PATA drive, so that no special Windows drivers are needed. Aside from that, there really shouldn't be any difference... in speed or otherwise.

 

Okay, so I am going to flash the bios to the old version. Install XP again, turn off the sata in bios, and keep it off. Should I just scrap the idea of having Direct Play then?

 

Using the old BIOS, QuickPlay partition should be able to be made workable, unless there's an issue with the new audio codec. But since other machines have used the newer codec for awhile now, I would think support should be included.

The only other thing you might need to do is run the fix I linked to earlier, if you're not able to boot into QuickPlay. XP really shouldn't be a problem though.

 

Mine did the same thing.

 

I would really like to hear what happened when you downgraded the bios and tried to reinstall everything, but i doubt I will want to keep running the notebook with the old bios just for QuickPlay Direct to work. I'm also thinking of scrapping the QuickPlay Direct project altogether. Just another thing I payed for that doesn't work and HP ain't gonna fix.

 

Just as a side thought before I follow through with this... Would it make sense to get the Media Center XP Restore CD from HP? All the guides im following includes the use of a SwSetup folder. However I have the SwSetup folder for Vista, which is different than that for XP. So I believe in order for me to get the right drivers and everything that CD would come in handy... That is to do it RIGHT this time... Ill order that cd from HP tonight if someone confirms that it would be of value to get things done right...

 

These are the steps I am performing now having flashed to the old bios version:

1. Disable Sata in Bios
2. Install XP MCE
-2 partitions, 1 with 25gb for Windows, 1 80 some gb that I will split later for direct play
3. Split the left over hard drive into a D for storage and 1028 for direct play
4. Install direct play first the \QPW folder and then the \HPQPDP

Hopefully I will beable to get into windows at this point. Ill let you guys know later today...


Can anyone send me the program that allows you to change what the quick play buttons do, I would like to test that out as well.

 

I'm following this thread. I want to know how it turns out.
You go, Bonjovi ...

I forgot which model notebook you are trying this on ???

 

Alright, doing that I turn the machine off and back on. I get this error:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file"

Should I do what JadedRaver suggested earlier in the RecoverConcole?
Any other suggestions?

 

I found the fix on HP's site about the missing Hal.
Here's how to fix it: http://tinyurl.com/ykja6w

 

ill try that tomorrow.... any other ideas?

 

Okay... It said that it couldnt find the file when I did part 2 of those instructions... But I CAN GET BACK INTO WINDOWS! But since it said that I tried both drives it had listed... (C:\ and E:\ apparently E:\ was the windows drive but i did the ren boot.ini to both drives...)
It wont boot into quickplay yet but it does go right to windows. NICE...

Though i do get a boot error, boot from C:\windows right before the windows loading comes up.. doesnt stay there long though.

 

Hmm... it really is sounding like Quickplay Direct Partition just doesn't want to work on the many of the new machines. I'm glad you're back into Windows, at least. But if your machine registered the Windows drive as E: when booting into the recovery console, it makes me wonder about whether the hard drive partitions are registering the way QuickPlay Direct needs them to. It's an unbelieveably finicky program, and partition ordering, etc, all kills its functionality.

How do you have your drive split? Is it just Windws drive, and Quickplay direct, or do you have a recovery partition too? Hopefully you haven't created a logical drive partition as that tends to kill QuickPlay as well.

 

Windows drive 25gb, Storage drive 80gb and quick play 1028mb. Is how its setup. Im gonna try that fix from hp and see if that helps. I dont really care about playing dvds with out booting into windows so thats no biggie.

 

I cannot get the webcam to work with the websites install... same with the quick launch buttons. The quick launch program installs but it doesn't give me the option to assign different functions...

Also when i adjust the volume a green old school tv looking style of meter shows up. How do I get rid of that?

 

Yeah, I don't know that anyone has EVER gotten Quickplay Direct working if you have a secondary storage partition. It's a very "dumb" bootloader, that expects the partitions to in a very specific way... the way HP ships the notebooks. If your system deviates from that standard, then Quickplay no longer boots.

I think you need to use an old version of Quicklaunch buttons (6.10A or earlier) in order to get the control panel. The new versions are designed to be Vista compatible, and don't have that. On the webcam, hmm. All I can think is that they changed the hardware or already applied the latest firmware to the webcam in the new notebooks. I'm not really sure what can be done about that.

I think the on-screen volume meter is tied to using XP MCE, if I remember correctly. I'm not sure how you'd go about getting rid of it.

 

yeah, i got quickplay to work. Now when I searched for the volume thinger it pointed me to disabling ehtray.exe on startup, but i read that doing so will also hurt other MCE features. On another forum I read about adding something to your registry and that did take care of the green bars but i am also without the cleaner looking volume display too.... hmmm

 

that's not true. quickplay DIRECT requires that is be installed on a PRIMARY partition of the main drive. i have a dv8000cto. it came with one drive and i added an extra one i had in storage. as long as quickplay direct is LAST partition on the main drive, and the software is installed in the correct order, it will work. you can email me for xp to vista upgrade and vista to xp downgrade. let me know


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robwhitey at g mail dot com