Need Advice On Wxp Home

[tman70]

My son and his wife run a business dealing with the public from their home and use their computer for both business and home.

They are runing Wme on a HP Pavilion XE783. They have not had any problems running Wme.

His wife wants to upgrade to Wxp home. She wants to go to a local repair shop that has just opened here in their small town and let them wipe the HD and install Wxp Home on it.

Since their files are going to have to be backed up anyway, I suggested they buy another HD from ebay and buy a copy of Wxp home/sp2 and install it themselves so they would have the codes and keys if something went wrong later. If after installation everything was alright they could use partition magic to move their files from old HD to HD with xp and then use old HD as a backup.

Price at repair shop and doing it themselves might be about the same.

I don't know anything about Wxp so am I thinking right or not?

As I am the one who has to come up and work on their computer, my grandchildren get a desperately needed grandpa fix.

Would appreciate any advice to give to them as to best way to do this.

[shanenin]

I run a repair shop myself, and am amazed I get paid $60 to install windows. I am cheap. One other shop in town chargesa $130 for desktop reinstall, $150 to do the job on a laptop. Those prices do not include the $100 for the upgrade cd of XP. That shop may also chage a fee to backup the data(I do it for free). They could be looking at about $200(or more) to have someone do it for them. At that point you may consider getting a brand new emachine for $300

I think they should at least try and do it them selfs. I would reccomend buying a new harddrvie(use the old for backup like you said). I just purchased some brand new WD 120gb hard for just $55(shipped). These included a three year warranty.

They can do themselves for about $150, this price would include a brand new much faster harddrive, Or they can pay someone $200 to reinstall it on their old harddrive(on its last legs).

You may also have to consider upgradding the memory.

edit added later//

If you have reinstalled any older version of windows, you should have no problem installing XP. It is much easer then installing 98 or ME.

Edited September 21, 2006 by shanenin

[MrBill]

I don't know how much RAM that they have or the processor speed, but XP has a min. that it needs.

Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Home Edition

• PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended

• 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

• 1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*

• Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor

• CD-ROM or DVD drive

• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

I did one with a 300MHz and 128MB of RAM and windows 98SE ran 3 times faster. You should have at least 700MHz and at least 256mb of RAM. If they had everything backed up and wanted to use the HD that they have, I would recommend a 0 (zero) wipe to the HD and then a clean install of XP. That way, the HD will be just like it was out of the box from the factory. Nothing will be left on it. If you have a copy of the old Version of Windows, you can buy an Upgrade of XP Home and go from there. It will just ask you for an earlier version disc. XP is a bootable CD. You just need to make sure that you have your CD as first boot device and put the disc in and go from there.

[TheTerrorist_75]

You could slap another stick of PC100 memory in it to meet the specs. Standard it shipped with 64MB of RAM and a 700MHz Celeron. It will support up to 512MB. Just add a 256MB stick. You would need to get the correct memory for that HP. They are fussy.

I would buy at least a 20GB hard drive. With updates and programs that need to be on the same partition as the OS I would install XP on no less than a 15GB partition. I use 20GB for XP.

I would also purchase WinXP Home OEM. That way you won't need a qualifying CD and believe it or not I have transferred Home OEM from one computer to another with out issue. This way if you wish to upgrade the computer later you can do so.

With a stick of memory, hard drive and Home OEM you should be able to do the job yourself for under $250.00. By slaving the old hard drive to the new one after installling XP it would be quite easy to transfer data.

One concern I do have is the onboard Intel 810 video. I don't know how well it will work with XP.

HP Pavilion XE783 Desktop PC - Product Specifications and What Ships in the Box

[shanenin]

With a stick of memory, hard drive and Home OEM you should be able to do the job yourself for under $250.00

I think you may scare him off with that price.

$90 xp home oem(at newegg)

$55 120 gb harddrive(at newegg)

$30 memory(that price may be less or more. I use used memory from ebay all the time)

$175 total

none the less, a shop will probably tack on another $100 - $150 to that price, once stuff is marked up

$110 xp home oem

$75 hardrive

$40 memory

$80 install windows

$305 totlal

Edited September 21, 2006 by shanenin

[tman70]

With a stick of memory, hard drive and Home OEM you should be able to do the job yourself for under $250.00

I think you may scare him off with that price.

$90 xp home oem(at newegg)

$55 120 gb harddrive(at newegg)

$30 memory(that price may be less or more. I use used memory from ebay all the time)

$175 total

none the less, a shop will probably tack on another $100 - $150 to that price

Thanks for the information Guys.

PC Pitstop test says there is no problem upgrading to XP on this Computer. A couple of programs will have to be upgraded for XP.

I believe I can save them some money by doing it myself. It takes a while to let them digest the facts and act on my suggestions.

If I have any trouble I know you on this board will walk me thru any problems.

I have had good luck buying HD's & Ram from ebay. Not sure about any Wxp from ebay though. Good or bad?

They have 320 ram of memory, 30 gig HD and I have been telling them they need to get another stick of 256 to go to 512 and they need to buy a new bios chip to have the latest update, as it will be a small price to pay if upgrading to XP. I just added a new bios chip to my computer.

I have installed W98se on my little Dell several times and am not afraid to go inside a computer as long as I know what I am doing.

I do have one question.

Is there a way to check how big a HD a sytem can handle, without trying different HD's in the computer? I would hate to buy a bigger HD and find out it wouldn't work.

[TheTerrorist_75]

Stay clear of buying XP on ebay. NewEgg has the best deals and you will not have to worry about XP not being legit.

Hard Drive Size Limitations and Barriers

If you have a motherboard that has a Intel chipset (810, 810E, 810E2, 815, 815, 815E, 815EP, 815P, 820, 820E, 830M, 830MP, 830MG, 840, 845, 850, or 860) please visit Intel's web site and download the Intel Application Accelerator. Intel's Application Accelerator supports the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB.

Edited September 21, 2006 by TheTerrorist_75

[blim]

Also check the Sunday Paper ads for XP--I've seen it advertised pretty cheap at Best Buy, etc lately--methinks they are beginning to clear out stock for Vista. (and from what I've heard about Vista, you want XP while you can still buy it!)

As far as installing XP, shoot, if you've installed 98, XP should be a breeze!! Son recently reinstalled XP and he said it was sooooo much easier than reinstallng 98.

Liz

[tman70]

Stay clear of buying XP on ebay. NewEgg has the best deals and you will not have to worry about XP not being legit.

Hard Drive Size Limitations and Barriers

If you have a motherboard that has a Intel chipset (810, 810E, 810E2, 815, 815, 815E, 815EP, 815P, 820, 820E, 830M, 830MP, 830MG, 840, 845, 850, or 860) please visit Intel's web site and download the Intel Application Accelerator. Intel's Application Accelerator supports the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB.

OK TT7_5. I have finally read the part about barriers and admit I was lost.

Since this is an Intel 810 chipset, am I understanding this Accelerator 2.3 right?

If I download it and run it now for their Wme it will make the computer a little faster and will allow up to a 137 gig HD. Then when they go to xp I will have to download and run it again. NewEgg has a 40 gig HD for around $40. I don't know how big they should go on HD.

As I said before XP is all new to me since I only have experience with W98se and Wme.

Thanks for advice.

[shanenin]

. NewEgg has a 40 gig HD for around $40.

After reading that, I was going to purchase one for myself, but..... If you are looking at the one for 39.99 with free shipping, it is SATA. You do not have that kind of a connector on your motherboard. Make sure you find a drive that is IDE. They have quite a few of those for $40 plus $5 for shippping.

[TheTerrorist_75]

Stay clear of buying XP on ebay. NewEgg has the best deals and you will not have to worry about XP not being legit.

Hard Drive Size Limitations and Barriers

If you have a motherboard that has a Intel chipset (810, 810E, 810E2, 815, 815, 815E, 815EP, 815P, 820, 820E, 830M, 830MP, 830MG, 840, 845, 850, or 860) please visit Intel's web site and download the Intel Application Accelerator. Intel's Application Accelerator supports the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB.

OK TT7_5. I have finally read the part about barriers and admit I was lost.

Since this is an Intel 810 chipset, am I understanding this Accelerator 2.3 right?

If I download it and run it now for their Wme it will make the computer a little faster and will allow up to a 137 gig HD. Then when they go to xp I will have to download and run it again. NewEgg has a 40 gig HD for around $40. I don't know how big they should go on HD.

As I said before XP is all new to me since I only have experience with W98se and Wme.

Thanks for advice.

It won't improve the speed of WinME. If you opt for the 40GB drive it should be fully recognized by ME or XP without downloading accelerator. As stated make sure the drive is IDE.

This hard drive at NewEgg will work fine http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822140118. In fact I plan on buying two of them for my computer. I don't need large drives for what files I keep on them.

[tman70]

. NewEgg has a 40 gig HD for around $40.

After reading that, I was going to purchase one for myself, but..... If you are looking at the one for 39.99 with free shipping, it is SATA. You do not have that kind of a connector on your motherboard. Make sure you find a drive that is IDE. They have quite a few of those for $40 plus $5 for shippping.

Yes, that was the one. I got in a hurry and did not read all of the information. Thanks.

Oh well, I have had good luck buying HD's on ebay at cheap prices and like TT_75 we don't need anything larger than a 40 at this time.

So I am going to try and convince them the "oldman" does know what he is talking about.

[shanenin]

Yes, that was the one. I got in a hurry and did not read all of the information. Thanks.

I have made the mistake before :-)