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Upgrading an old HP to WinXP, need advice.

R

Roots

Member
BACKGROUND:

My manager at work wants to upgrade his old HP Pavilion 4535. Basically he told me he wants WinXP on it, Adobe Photoshop, and he just wants to be able to have a crapload of MP3s, burn CDs, and upload pictures on his digital camera. Possibly run a DSL connection on it in the future. I took a look at it today and came up with an estimate of what he needs.

WHAT HE HAS:

Intel Celeron 400MHz
64MB PC100 SDRAM
6GB HDD
32X CD-ROM
...and a bunch of generic crap.

WHAT I WANT TO DO:

- Completely replace the 6GB HDD with a 40GB one (there is no space for having more than one HDD).
- Replace the 32X CD-ROM with 54X/32X/54X CD-RW drive
- Add 128MB of PC100 SDRAM to the other DIMM slot.
- Do a clean install of WinXP on the new HDD, and pray everything works

WHAT I WANT TO KNOW:

Is this do-able? I'm a little concerned because the requirements are going to be a little close to WinXPs base requirements, not to mention I'm scared out of my mind that there will be a a problem upgrading the drivers to run with XP. I might replace his generic POS sound card with a SB Live!, and he doesn't care about the modem. He said he might want to hook it up to DSL though. He's willing to spend $1000 if he needs to buy a new computer. I'm just worried that he is going to buy all this stuff, and then we are going to find out its not going to work and he'll fire me lol. What do you think?
 
XP on a celeron 400 is very, very slow. It takes for ever to boot and it takes a long time to load programs. But it would run. A quick search looks like that sytem could use two 128 meg sticks. I'd talk him into buying two new 128's if he persists on wanting XP. Make sure the ram is intel compatible. If you get high density, cheap ram, it probably won't see it right.

It seems as though that has an 810 chipset, so getting the latest drivers will be just a matter of going to intel's site for the latest. Though I'm fairly sure XP has them built in. The modem may not work, it seems to me I looked up a similar model, and HP said they wouldn't be making xp drivers. Though if you could figure out who made it, they probably have drivers.

The 40 gig will help it boot quicker. You might want to make sure it has the latest bios, to make sure that it sees it.

Check on who made the sound card. It may be an aztech, and they should have base xp drivers. Who knows, XP may see it on it's own.

In the end, I'd say it's doable, but it will be slow.
 
Yeah, it's definitely doable. I've installed XP on
PII 400
PII 350
K6 400

But like redbeard said, it is slow. I run the PII 400 with 256 MB of RAM. It goes ok cause I'm used to it. If you could spend $1000 though, you may just look at upgrading the whole thing.
 
If he's willing to go $1000 just do the upgrade. An nForce 2 board, and XP1700+, case RAM and drives for under 500. Search around, you can do it. If he insists on upgrading, get as much RAM as possible and do a clean install.

And if he fires you, he's a loser and you should be working someplace else anyway.... 😉
 
I said he's willing to spend $1000, but he doesn't want to. The upgrades to the existing PC will cost him only $120. I know I could put a decent machine together for under $1000 easily. I'll just have to ask him what he wants to do I guess. Thanks for the help guys.
 
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