HP Computer with XP- Upgrade Motherboard and Processor

[billbranch]

This HP 501n is sluggish and the on-board graphics were unstable. Ragardless, I have a new board and an AMD XP2400. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I can set the BIOS to read a new XP CD and install from there, or...
I can turn the thing on and call HP to try to get them to tell me how to get it to work.
I'd rather the clean install, and I believe I'll get a message asking if I want to format the drive. Will this eliminate the stored HP version of XP as well?
What would happen if I were to run a bootable floppy from WIN98?
Any help is appreciated.
Bill

[Darthtanion]

The first thing you'll want to do is to figure out if you have an actual WinXP installation disk or a makeshift "Recovery Disk" that is commonly provided by a manufacturer. If it is a recovery disk, you'll be better off just going out and buying a new copy of WinXP as this is nothing more than an image of the original installation. Windows Setup does not run and the image is designed for the peripherals that were installed on the machine in its original configuration.

If, on the other hand, you are lucky enough to have an actual WinXP install disk, then you can simply boot from the CD after installing the new hardware and do a clean install. And yes, you have the option early during this install of formatting the drive (recommended) and this will not delete data, but writes the Master Boot Record of the hard drive so it cannot access the saved (and hidden) backup files from HP.

Good luck!

[billbranch]

There is no recovery disk and no OEM CD: HP has allocated an area of the hard drive to store XP and from which I can run a system restore or whatever. I have nothing I can't save to disk which I need.
What would happen if I used an old bootable floppy from WIN98?
I'll just spring for a new XP CD and that'll be it?

[Darthtanion]

If you use an old Win98 boot disk, you likely will be unable to even detect the drive since WinXP normally uses the NTFS file system... something that Win98 cannot support.

If this recovery area is on the hard disk itself, then it will be nothing more than an image. It won't work for a full system installation. Though it doesn't do you any good now, if you purchase a machine in the future, always get a real installation disk or tell them what they can do with their machine. It is simply too important to not have; besides which you purchase a single-user license for the operating system when you buy the machine. They should provide the media.

[Yawgm0th]

If you use an old Win98 boot disk, you likely will be unable to even detect the drive since WinXP normally uses the NTFS file system... something that Win98 cannot support.

Actually, HP formats the recovery drive in FAT32. However, that is irrelevant....

You can see if you can get a disk from HP, but I highly doubt you can. You should go buy a new copy. You could get a different OS (98SE or 2000) if you really wanted to save money, but XP is probably your best choice for ease-of-use and stability.