Restore HP laptop operating system

[Gustavus]

A friend has an old HP laptop -- zd7100 -- on which the hard drive catastrophically failed. She has everything that came with it, down to a ten year old sales receipt. I purchased a replacement drive and will have to restore from the ground up for her. Her operating system restore disk is dated 2003 for Windows XP Home. The serial number for Windows is on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop so I can restore from what she has etc. but service packs and uncountably many updates will not be there.

My Windows XP install disk is for Windows XP Pro with all service packs and updates until a few months ago slipstreamed in.

If I install from my CD and register with the serial which belongs to her laptop will there be a problem? I do have the driver restore disk that came with the laptop so assume those can be loaded with no problem once the OS is loaded and working. She has licenses for all sorts of software, some of which like her AVG antivirus I will install.

Advice would be much appreciated -- except for junk it and get a new laptop. I suggested that and ended up with the job of getting it going again.

 

[denis280]

you could try installing your windows xp pro.but i doubt they will accept her key.or you could download sp3 iso from MS and install it after.

 

[Gustavus]

denis280

Thanks for the reply. That is what I suspected and feared that her key wouldn't work with an install of my Windows Pro. In ten years a lot has happened so there may be other problems too. I can always do a recover from her CD and then let it go forever getting updated. Sure would have been nice to bypass all of that.

The zd7100 weighs in at 9.3 lbs. Weighs in is the right way to describe it.

 

[Fardringle]

Use Nlite to slipstream the service packs into that existing HP install disc, then you can skip the majority of the updates after the installation. There will still be updates, but you won't have to go through the process of installing all of the service packs and their patches - just the patches after SP3.

 

[Gustavus]

Fardringle
good suggestion. That is what I will do.

As my boss used to say when I made a good suggestion: Glad I thought of it.

 

[Fardringle]

You're welcome. I like it when I get good ideas "by proxy" as well. 🙂

 

[Arkaign]

Great info.

I would definitely NOT use the original driver disc though. Better drivers have been released for that hardware after that disc was created.

Find the exact model, and use drivers like these (this is for a ZD7160US, but most/all of this may apply depending on your model)

Sound : http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp28001-28500/sp28008.exe
Quicklaunch : http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp29501-30000/sp29528.exe
Touchpad : http://drivers.synaptics.com/Synapt...7-32_XP64_Vista64_Win7-64_Signed_Acme_Inc.zip
Modem : http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp25001-25500/sp25161.exe
Realtek 8139 Network : http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...6&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#1
Broadcom Wireless : http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp30001-30500/SP30379.exe

Most of that will apply, though the Wireless could be different.

Find out what video adapter it has (get the hardware id from device manager) and post it back here, I'll find you an updated/improved graphics driver that will work.

 

[Gustavus]

Arkaign

Thanks for the suggestion and the information. Without thinking about it I had just planned on using her driver restore CD -- still has the unbroken seal from 2003, so you are right they will have been updated several times.

I am hoping the replacement hard drive comes in todays mail.

I was mistaken about the model number. The tag on the bottom of the laptop says zd7000 not zd7100 as I had said.

PS
Found the HP page of drivers for the zd7000. Will download the relevant ones. Thanks for the help.

 

[Arkaign]

Cool.

If it has a Synaptics pad, skip the HP driver for that and go to that Synaptics link above. Also find out what video card it has. Most of the time OEMs like HP/Dell/etc never update drivers after a certain point, and we may find a 2006ish driver for the video card that will be further improved.

On the bottom of the unit the full model should be available. ZD7020US or whatever.

 

[Gustavus]

Arkaign

Thanks again. I am a poor choice for someone to restore her laptop -- but I am what she has. I have never owned a "builtup" computer in my life but have assembled dozens from components and have overclocked as a matter of course. The relevant point is I have never owned a laptop or any mobile device.

Here is all the information on the tag on the bottom of her laptop

Product: zd7000
s/n: CNF345023C
p/n: DM791A#ABA

service tag zd7056cl

stenciled on the case itself is

Broadcom BCM94306MP

 

[Arkaign]

Excellent.

Okay, that appears to be a Geforce 5600 Go. Confirm that by checking the hardware ID in device manager, and if so get this :

http://laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp/175.95/disclaimer

You use it by downloading and unpacking the driver, then right-clicking and saving the .inf file on top of the unpacked driver, replacing the locked inf with the unlocked one from that site.

Basically NVidia released tons of new drivers for desktop versions of the cards, and the laptop versions use the same driver, but the inf file blocks installation of most driver updates for the laptop versions. That sucks, because then you get stuck with really old, and in some cases partially broken drivers. This gets around that.

To get the hardware ID for the video card, go to the device manager, bring up the display adapter, go to 'details' and then select hardware ID.

Then google the hardware id, and see what comes up.

 

[Gustavus]

Arkaign

If you happen to see this post, I have a question. I installed Windows XP and ESET System Security -- the later is a temporary install since she owns AVG. I allowed Eset to update virus definitions -- took a long time -- and then allowed Windows to update which took so long I thought the system was hung. Eventually got both so decided the problem had to be the internet connection. Ran Comcast speed test and got 24 - 28 Mbps download on several tests and around 5.4 Mbps upload. Speakeasy connecting to Los Angeles is in the same ball park. It is a new install -- only those two pieces of software -- and ESET gives it a clean bill of health so it is not a virus.

I have never seen a machine so slow -- well not in a very long time. There is 2 GB of Ram, the CPU is 2.4 GHz. Any idea of what could be wrong? I have a 12 year old machine here in the lab on an ancient ABIT TH7 MB overclocked from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz. CNN home page opens on it in 7 to 8 seconds. The laptop with coincidentally the exact same speed CPU takes 2 minutes and 9 seconds to open the same home page!

Thanks in advance.

Both machines are connected to the same router with Cat6 ethernet cables.

 

[Ketchup]

Which part was slow.... downloading the updates, searching for them, or installing them? There are a ton out there for XP, even with SP3. Had you upgraded to SP3 before you ran Windows update?

I laptop will most likely have a slower hard drive compared to a desktop too.

 

[Gustavus]

Thanks to all who responded.
When I turned the laptop off last night I got the familiar box saying there were updates waiting to be installed etc. Then the message became; Installing update 1 of 114.

Took a very long time as you might expect to install 114 updates, but somewhere in that collection were ones that mattered. The CNN home page now opens in 5 seconds.

Now it is a matter of getting the various drivers updated.

 

[Ketchup]

We were having a discussion about this a couple weeks ago. XP takes forever to update anymore. The key is to get all the big ones (SP3, .net framework, etc) manually, and the auto update goes much faster.