HP 510C: Any way to load OS without using the HP restore disks?

[Ray06492]

I have a HP 510C. The set of 7 restore disks, are not any good.

I rec'd this pc, without the original hd, and a few other parts. I installed a formatted hd, and tried to install the restore disks, provided by the previous owner, but the 1st disk, is damaged.

I Have a never used, never activated, XP Home.

It there any way to install this copy of XP home, without calling HP, and ordering a new set of restore disks for this pc?

Thank you for your help,
Raymond

 

[egale]

It should work. You may have to go out onto the net to get any proprietary drivers HP uses but other than that, it should be no problem. Plus, if you got HP's restore disks, you would wind up with all the crap that they load on a machine.

 

[johnjkr1]

You would just install XP home on it like you would on any other pc...HP has all the drivers available for searching by system type and OS..pretty easy....Also, depending on how "broken" the 1st cd in the set it, you could try a scrath remover

 

[Ray06492]

When I put in the HP home, the HP pc asks for the number one, startup disk.

How do I get around that?

Thanks for the help.

Take care,
Raymond

 

[UMfanatic]

try using XP home in unison with the hp disks you have, I would suggest using XP pro if you can get your hands on it

 

[Ray06492]

I tryed using Xp home in conjunction with the hp restore disks, and it doesn't work. As soon as I put in the xp home, it asks for the hp disk #1.

Take care,
Raymond

 

[johnjkr1]

A normal XP home disk has no need for any HP discs, unless the XP home disk you are referring to is a "special" hp one

 

[Ray06492]

This hp pc, insists that I use the hp restore disks.

The copy of xp home is NOT a hp xp home.

Thank you for your time,
Ray

 

[amdskip]

Just boot off the xp home cd. Screw the restore disks, they suck.

 

[johnjkr1]

I think he has already tried booting straight to his non-HP home disk, if so....read below


That is quite odd, and it is probably due to one of their hidden partitions...there is a simple solution for that....the debug script....basically, it works like this...you have a boot disk with debug on it...not sure if standard 98 boot disks have it or not, but if they dont, here is a boot disk maker

http://support.dell.com/filelib/format.aspx?releaseid=r19775

I used this script all the time at Dell, basically, it destroys all partitions, including hidden ones and you start off with a nice fresh drive (it was great for viruses)...also, it is not Dell specific or anything, i use it all the time on my home machines (non-dell's)

here is a link to the script:

http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?dn=1011054

debug
-F 200 L1000 0
-A CS:100
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80


NOTE: Type 80 for the primary hard drive - HD 0, or type 81 for the secondary hard drive - HD 1.
In most cases, the primary hard drive is required 80.


xxxx:010C INT 13
xxxx:010E INT 20
xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank. Press the <Enter> key to continue.)
-G

 

[amdskip]

No way can that be a requirement. Boot off XP home cd then delete any and all partitions. Create new partition, format partition.