HP Laptops and Vista Beta 2

[Guest]

I have a brand new HP DV8000T laptop computer which I customized with every
thing that you could possibly put on it. I am very interest in installing
Beta 2 but I am worried because the Vista Upgrade Advisor said that alot of
my hardware needs compatible drivers. I have upgraded all of the drivers to
the latest ones from the HP site, and still it says that the drivers are
incompatible. If anyone has an HP laptop, especially one with bluetooth,
please tell me if you had any problems with the drivers being Vista
Compatible. Sorry about the long post.
Thanks,
RJ

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The drivers on the website are for XP. The drivers the advisor is talking
about are Vista drivers. If Vista drivers are not available on the HP
website (doubtful) then the advisor is telling you that upgrade is high
risk.

You should not be upgrading XP to Vista on any production or primary
machine. You cannot recover to XP again without completely reinstalling
from your recovery cd's or a hidden partition on your hard drive. You will
lose all files because there is no files and settings transfer wizard for
going from Vista back to XP.

Only install Vista on your computer if you have a separate partition
available. This will allow you to run both XP and Vista in a dual boot
scenario.

The upgrade function is not advisable unless you are running a second copy
of XP for test purposes. Otherwise, do a clean install to a second
partition.

 

[Guest]

I have two hard drives built into my computer, could I install vista on the
blank hard drive and leave XP on the primary drive? Also, if this is possible
could and how would I choose which operating system to boot up?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Just a couple of things:

- Laptops generally have proprietary hardware that uses specialized drivers
from the manufacturer and are not in a retail version of Windows. The best
source is usually the manufacturer, but remember they may not have developed
drivers for Vista yet.

- The "latest" drivers are probably XP certified, but may or may not work in
Vista. Vista is a beta product, and it is not suitable for production work,
nor is it supported on all hardware. You may need to wait until HP releases
appropriate drivers - if they do at all, they are under no obligation to.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

That is exactly what you should do. The Vista installer will create a boot
options screen that will appear once installation is finished so that when
you turn on the computer you will get to choose between "Windows" and
"Legacy Windows" (meaning XP). Following installation Vista will be the
default OS (if you do nothing while the screen is showing it will be Vista
that will start). You can change that after everything is up and running.

You may not have key functionality (wireless, hi-res video, sound, and so
on) depending on whether Vista has drivers for your computer. Things like
that will largely determine whether you decide to stick with Vista or not.

I suggest that you right click on the second drive now and give it a name
like "Vista" before you start anything so that the drive is easily
recognizable after you start Vista installation. (You want to avoid any
confusion about the drives.)

I would start the Vista installation from the XP desktop rather than a cold
boot.

 

[Guest]

I have an HP laptop (ZV6000 CTO) with bluetooth. the upgrade advisor gave a
warning about bluetooth drivers not being available, but Vista installed
Microsofts bluetooth stack, and it works fine. the only things I couldn't get
working were the "quick launch" buttons, and the sound (sound plays, but it's
choppy)