HP compaq (preloaded)

[Zep 0]

A few years ago I bought a compaq that came preloaded with Vista basic.
I never really used the machine as it was handier to use the PC.

Now I find that I'm using the laptop more and more, so the first thing
was get rid of Vista and load XP, What a fucking nightmare.


I will never buy another preloaded machine,

Gone fishing

[skydiver30960 0]

Most importantly, don't buy a machine preloaded with Vista.

I'm currently tick-tickety-ticking away on my two-day-old Dell laptop preloaded with Windows 7 and other sundries. While it definitely wouldn't meet the needs of some of you silicon (not silicone) freaks out there, for me and the wifey it's plenty. I'm still learning about the little differences between XP and 7, but overall I'm pretty happy.

Oh, and before some hoser chimes in, I DID look at macs, and was going to have to pay almost three times as much for a similarly sized Mac. Given our propensity for being hard on our electronics, the Dell seemed like a better bet.

Elvisio "gotta get ready for work, but mezmerized by the HD screen compared to my old 2004-era POS screen" Rodriguez

[Gawain 0]

Quote

A few years ago I bought a compaq that came preloaded with Vista basic.
I never really used the machine as it was handier to use the PC.

Now I find that I'm using the laptop more and more, so the first thing
was get rid of Vista and load XP, What a fucking nightmare.


I will never buy another preloaded machine,

I bought my Fujitsu pre-loaded with Windows 7, and haven't looked back. I've read that the migration from Vista to Win7 is relatively painless. If you can, give 7 a shot, I'm certain you'll be surprised. I'm quite pleased with it.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[Zep 0]

Quote

Most importantly, don't buy a machine preloaded with Vista.


Elvisio "gotta get ready for work, but mezmerized by the HD screen compared to my old 2004-era POS screen" Rodriguez

I know that now, but when I bought it Vista was cutting edge ( acording to MS )
The machine's hdd was partitioned into three, two partitions full of crap I was never going to use.
What should of been an eaisy task of just changing the OS was una mierda.
Trying to load XP kept returning a screen saying (in Spanish) no HDD XP can't be run on this machine.

It's my machine and I'll run any damm OS I want.

So off I go in to the bios and start fiddling, turned out I needed to disable the SATA option,
now I can load XP, HDD formated, XP loaded, God damm it I've only got half a screen,
You've guessed it, I dont have the drivers, Back to the trusty PC and do a million searches for the drivers,
found everything except the driver for the card reader, that can wait for a bit.

So it is possible to wind back to trusty old XP but it takes time and paitence.

Gone fishing

[regulator 0]

Just run Fdisk and create one logical partition and then format your hard drive. Delete the current partitions first...although there's probably one partition dedicated to some sort of system drivers that you probably cant delete but that shouldn't have much of an impact regarding the physical size of your hard drive.