CF-28, need help reinstalling OS.

Good morning all, this is my first post and I must say I LOVE THIS FORUM!! This place is great! I just purchased a used working CF-28 for 50 bucks from my employer. The problem I have is the machine is slow on startup, takes a minute or two to show the icons on my desktop, other than that, its flawless. I have removed programs that I didnt need, performed disk cleanup, defrag, its a little faster, but not much. I want to reformat and reinstall xp pro, but I cant find any of the disks that came with the machine. Its a Mark II best I can tell, its in the truck right now and its raining so I dont have the number, it starts cf-28p..... best I can remember. It is all stock except for a dvd drive has been installed. Is there a way to reinstall xp pro without the disks? The product key is readable on the sticker on the bottom of laptop if that helps. Please help a newbie as I am green on working on pc's. Thanks in advance!!

Matthew.

 

dieseldoc,
Welcome to the forum. You need to max out your ram and put in the fastest hard drive you can find, probably a Samsung HM160HC. It will never be terribly fast. Check out the CF-28FAQ at the top of the forum for all you need to know.
CAP

 

What would you say if I said that there is a drive available that is so fast that the cf-28 will boot up to windows in less that 30 seconds

It’s possible and not expensive either

The Samsung model that Cap posted is the drive that I recommend
An I have personally installed that drive in mk-2 cf-28’s with SSD performance at a fraction of that price

Matthew email sent


Alex

 

Matthew,
Let us know if you have any issues installing the OS and drivers. Alex will probably take care of you. Be careful who you listen to around here, the second response to your question was complete codswallop (look it up).
CAP

 

Thanks for the responses guys, I really appreciate it. Alex, you have mail . Thanks again, I will let you all know how it turns out. Im not looking for anything super fast but I can remember a time when this laptop wasnt so bogged down before it got all the oem programs installed for the trucks I used it on.

 

Where can I purchase the model you mentioned Cap? Also, any ballpark figure on how much it will cost? I have been thinking of upgrading the memory also, been looking around at where I can get that too.

 

Newegg has them for $62.99 with free shipping at the moment.
CAP

 

ZipZoomFly also has it for $60.99 shipped.

 

Sounds great! Hey Trooper, you're only about two hours south of me. Greetings from Dothan Al.!

 

Dieseldoc,
Let me know if you need anything for the 28. I have a few parts including a 600Mhz parts unit if you are interested and from here the shipping would be very inexpensive, or if you end up getting someithing, I may even drop them off when I go home to SC.

 

Trooper,

I am in need of the rear port cover for my 28 if you have one. Also, I have a question. When I try to play a dvd, it says windows media player cannot play the dvd because a valid encoder is not installed/ What can I do to remedy this so I can play my dvd's? It came stock with a cd but my employer installed the dvd drive, it will play cd's but wont play my dvd's. Anyone know what to do?

 

Download and install VLC media player.
It is free and it works well.

Bob

 

While Im waiting on a few things, is there anyone who has a stick of 512 memory for my 28 that they would like to part with? Hopefully in a week or two I can get the hard drive that Cap mentioned, trying to do one thing at a time lol.