HP Pavilion 4445 And WinXP

[doubledragon5]

Hi Just completed a system upgrade for this machine for a neighbors son. He was runing Win xp and some other software put had a very small hd and little ram. I upgraded it from 128 mb to 256 mb and 4.3 hd to a 20 g hd. Now here is the problem. They haven't brought over the OS yet to install so I wanted to see if the Xp will install without haveing win 98 frist which was the original OS shipped with this system. I tried to install my retail version, but during boot up it says "Invalid system Disk"

Now I went to HP site and read on the upgrade to XP and it doesn't sound like it was a good Idea, but it was working for them. My question is do I need to install Win 98 first for the system to upgrade to XP??? I'm not sure if they have the original system disk for the machine since my neighbor got it from her brother without any software. Thanks again.

[glc]

You should be able to install XP clean by booting with the CD. You may have to get into the bios and make sure the CD drive is set first in the boot order. If it's an upgrade version, all you need to do is pop a 98 CD in when it does the compliance check.

[doubledragon5]

I tried that and it failed to load. Still gives the same message. Hp says that because it was made long before XP came around they claim it may not run properly. This system is at least 6 yrs old. It bios you have a choice of which OS to install Other Win95 or Win98. I tried by using Win98 or other.

[doubledragon5]

Problem solved. I downloaded a bootable floopy for the quantum hd, did a low level format. Now I'm downloading a floopy, for a copy of Win 98SE I have and going to give it to them after it has been installed. If they want XP again, then they can reinstall it if they get the original copy.