XP and Dell / Hewlett Packard

[quartet-man]

Okay, I learned on the parts thread of mine that the Dell CD on my damaged computer and key only work on Dells. The lady at church whose hard drive became a brick had a Hewlett Packard. I have it here at church. Anyhow, it had CD, but she has no disc with it. Could I use the Dell Win XP disc I have on that, but her key? I am not sure what is tied into the Dell bios. If not, I have a Lenovo netbook, but never backed anything up yet. (I have had it about 5 months.) Could I make some sort of backup or data disc from that and use that? I got an external DVD burner for it. I wanted to see if a hard drive I have here and that would get the computer going. If so, she will donate it to the church. The computer we are using for the "server" for our network here has WIN 98 SE I think. It is an older, slow computer. I hoped to use the Dell (I seem on the way to getting it going perhaps) or the Hewlett Packard in place of it to speed things up.

Failing the HP, I guess I can wait until I get the XP disc for the one I am having built and use it I presume (but the HP key.) Will any of this work?

[glc]

No. The HP key will only work with a HP recovery CD. That's the problem with name brand OEM.

[quartet-man]

I seem to be striking out all over. I did remember one thing though. My brother has a HP (I think) and ordered a recovery CD. If I either used his recovery or ordered one from HP (if possible), would I be set?

I tell you between the proprietary parts, OS's etc. on pre-builts, I am not sure I will ever by another name brand. (Except perhaps a netbook or notebook.)

[glc]

Your brother's recovery CD won't do you much good if it's for a different model - it's not like Dell. Dell CD's are just a generic Windows install without drivers or any of the preinstalled crapware. HP's are a full restore, including drivers and crapware. You may be able to order a recovery set, but you also may have to bite the bullet and buy another copy of XP.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...cname=bph07143

The lady made a big mistake by not making the recovery CD's right when she bought it.

I tell you between the proprietary parts, OS's etc. on pre-builts, I am not sure I will ever by another name brand. (Except perhaps a netbook or notebook.)

I've been preaching that for years. The only name brand computer I'll recommend to ANYONE is Dell.

[quartet-man]

Yeah, she never had DVD's to make them and just never did. She is REALLY anti-Dell due to problems with them at her workplace. She was the head of the tech committee years ago and wouldn't even consider them. :-) She is pretty pro-HP (I am not sure if they use those there or not) and she just bought a new HP yesterday she tells me. I had suggested a Lenovo, but for whatever reason, she didn't go for it.

I will tell her to be sure and make the backups for her new one. I think she has learned a lesson about backups after losing all the data on the HD that became hosed.

[rwest]

I don't know if it will work, but maybe Xp lite? If you use your brothers HP to make the disk, and use the key from her pc it may work. Not sure though.

While you may not get the exact drivers for her pc, XP should load generic drivers to get her pc up and running . You would probably have to call to get it activated though. I realy don't know if this will work or not.
But XP lite was a pretty powerful program.

[glc]

As I said, HP uses a proprietary recovery CD, not a generic Windows CD. XP Lite is not going to work.

My honest opinion? You are a church. Beg for donated XP media and licenses.

[quartet-man]

Perhaps someone has an old computer they aren't using that has XP or got Vista or 7 and no longer need XP. I am not even sure the computer will work. I did see one capacitor that seemed raised. I thought if I knew the XP would work, I could try to get it going as I have an IDE hard drive I could use. I have WIN98SE licenses from the attempt to get youth computers going years ago (the first attempt at DSL). The kibosh was put on it by the next youth directors and we never went forward until a Trustee head and a few others realized how badly we needed internet there. (I was using dialup from my own account.)