Reinstall XP on HP Laptop's new hard drive.

[Guest]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.
Not even Recovery CD. I have xp cds - which i bought for my home pc. Can I
install that and use her cd key from the sticker on the laptop? Or better
still can you get a download of XP without paying full price for
circumstances like this? Dont really want to clone old drive, as all the
problems will come too. thoughts?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

You probably won't have any luck with using your CD, since Activation will
likely fail. Doesn't matter what Product Key you use, that isn't the
license, just a key to allow the CD to work. License and activation depend
on other numbers entirely.

Your friend really needs to contact HP for replacement media, if possible.
Laptops, in particular, may require the manufacturer's installation files,
since they are often modified for the particular model machine.

No, there is no place to legitimately download Windows XP, and if you go for
an illegitimate copy, be prepared for problems in the future. WGA, for one
thing, will likely fail the system, causing the user to be unable to update
the system easily.

 

[Merlin]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive
had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on
new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.
Not even Recovery CD. I have xp cds - which i bought for my home pc. Can
I
install that and use her cd key from the sticker on the laptop? Or better
still can you get a download of XP without paying full price for
circumstances like this? Dont really want to clone old drive, as all the
problems will come too. thoughts?

Thanks for your time.

I believe HP put a recovery patition on their harddrives. If the old
harddrive still works you can reinstall it and make a recovery cd set from
it and use them to install on the new drive. Check the users manual on how
to do it. If you don't have a users manual you can download one in .pdf
format from HP's website.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive
had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on
new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.
Not even Recovery CD. I have xp cds - which i bought for my home pc. Can
I
install that and use her cd key from the sticker on the laptop? Or better
still can you get a download of XP without paying full price for
circumstances like this? Dont really want to clone old drive, as all the
problems will come too. thoughts?

Thanks for your time.

Sorry, but this isn't a good plan. The key will not match the setup type,
so setup will halt, and you will not have the correct drivers anyway.

You need the recovery partition from the old drive, which means you need to
clone the old disk to the new one. If there were no recovery disks, there
is a recovery parttition.

Otherwise, you need to contact HP for restore media.

Save a copy of the clone image, so that you have her old data and can
restore it later. This means you'll need to use cloning software like
Acronis TrueImage or Ghost that can mount the image.

TI has a free trial version that will run perfectly for the time you need.

After you've cloned all the partitions to the new hard disk, restart
selecting the Restore function. Choose the options to wipe the drive.

HTH
-pk

 

[David Abbott]

HP/Compaq out a recovery partition on some of their older computers like two
to three years ago. I don't know what they do now. I purchased a new
Compaq desktop computer and had to burn recovery CD's.

I would see if you could burn cd's from the old harddrive.

 

[Allan]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive
had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on
new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.
Not even Recovery CD. I have xp cds - which i bought for my home pc. Can
I
install that and use her cd key from the sticker on the laptop? Or better
still can you get a download of XP without paying full price for
circumstances like this? Dont really want to clone old drive, as all the
problems will come too. thoughts?

Thanks for your time.

The old HD was the recovery media that HP provides. You can contact HP and
order installation CDs or DVDs for that laptop. I think that a generic OEM
version of Windows XP would also work but that would cost much more than the
HP disks and probably not work as well.

 

[Rock]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive
had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on
new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.
Not even Recovery CD. I have xp cds - which i bought for my home pc. Can
I
install that and use her cd key from the sticker on the laptop? Or better
still can you get a download of XP without paying full price for
circumstances like this? Dont really want to clone old drive, as all the
problems will come too. thoughts?

Thanks for your time.

Why would one replace a hard drive because of a malware infection?

 

[Plato]

Long story short. Friends HP (Pavilion - i think) laptop, her hard drive had
bad virus and new drive was installed. Situation, Nothing installed on new
drive as yet. Want to put her XP on it. No discs with HP when purchased.

For laptops, its always best to get/acquire the recovery CDs from the
maker of the laptop, as they all the specific drivers one needs to
operate all the features of the laptop.