Windows Vista HP Desktop retrograde install of Windows XP
THIS TASK WAS PRETTY SIMPLE AND NO REGISTRY TWEAKING WAS NEEDED!
THIS PAGE DESCRIBES THE PROCESS FOR MY PARTICULAR PC / GRAPHICS CARD
/ PERIPHERAL COMBINATION IT MIGHT NOT BE THE SAME FOR YOU!!!!
Motherboard manufacturer's name: Asus M2N68-LA came up with HP/Compaq
name: Narra-GL8E
I though my efforts were worth documenting..... google and google images
helped a lot!
WHERE I STARTED: April 2008 New HP Desktop installed with Vista and
a Vista recovery partition on the hard disk BUT no drivers on CD or otherwise......................
#1 Simply Installed XP Pro over the Vista main partition (with a
bootable Windows XP Pro install, BIOS set to boot CD first!) left the
small VISTA recovery partition untouched ( for later merging with Partition
Magic) as the remaining 480+ GB on the huge SATA Drive was more than enough
#2 Post XP Pro install............ Start > Settings > Control
Panel > System > Hardware (tab) > Device Manager highlighted
a number of missing system files leading to driver issues (visible as
yellow question marks) .......
The AIDA32 application (download from MajorGeeks) also told me very
little about the chipset
Everything appeared to 'sort of work' ( i.e. in basic mode) apart
from the sound and the LAN connection....
Googling for xp "install on vista hp desktop" found lots of
links ....
There were basically some missing system ( chipset) files which
I sort of expected to find by googling for the motherboard model markings
( as it was an ASUS board) in conjunction with a listing of the PCs specification
on the HP website, so............
#3 Took the back off the PC and read the markings on the motherboard,
the ASUS chips were a big clue!!! Asus M2N68-LA confirmed ..... Downloaded
the nearest chipset driver set from the marking from the ASUS website....
but not everything was resolved... I downloaded the ASUS M2N68 XP chipset
drivers as the M2N68-LA was manufactured by ASUS for HP and is not supported
by them so no drivers no nothing @HP.com!
If you can see the manufacturers names on the motherboard and/or
the graphics cards you can find your driver sets.......! The PCI-E x16
graphics card was ASUS too!
..More googling identified a few threads in forums from people suffering
the same issues... missing drivers!
#4 I thought I could work out the drivers needed for the GRAPHICS card,
but there were no model marked on it.... simple googling failed then I
look at google images for "ASUS graphics card hdmi hp pci-e"
to find a photo of which card it was ... seemed to work... found a picture
of the Asus EN7600GT HDMI PCI-E 256 MB
GO: Download > Graphic Card> EN7600 Series
Googling produced a thread called "Asus M2N68-LA Motherboard and
PCI Realtek RTL8201N 10/100Mbps" on Major geeks... BINGO! LAN sorted
: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=156991
Will update as we encounter and more issues ......WE DID NOT DOWNGRADE
WITH ANY INTENTION OF BEING ABLE TO RESTORE THE ORIGINAL VISTA INSTALL
AT A LATER STAGE!
Page updated: Saturday, September 6, 2008 Thanks to Corin Fiddaman for the use of
his ( now XP Pro) HP PC in this adventure!
Enough? [contact me if this
helped you]
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