Compaq question

[stevo1210]

I need to fix a laptop for my friend this Friday. She says it's been working very slow and stuff... she hasn't had it reformatted since the day she bought it a few years back. It's a Compaq laptop and runs on Windows XP... That's about all I know right now.

Now I have heard that Compaq uses recovery CDs or something? and not the average joe Windows CD like Dell does?

So what CDs/DVDs exactly does she need to hand over to me so I can reinstall Windows back to the original factory configuration?

Then there's the driver issue which I will have to sort out afterwards *sigh*.

Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: Compaq question

Also, would it be a wise idea to run memtest before ahnd to check that everything is in order?

[Junk Parts]

Re: Compaq question

Stevo I did a nice Hp Compaq Lappy for my son sometime back and here is what I can tell you. Off the top I think it was a d 530 maybe. I do remember that it had almost every option you could think of. I used OTC windows xp corp sp1 on it. I then installed sp2 and sp3 off of my cd's. I then downloaded all of my drivers from the Hp Compaq site free of charge. The hardest one was the last device that windows just called and "Unknown Device. I think the thing was a TCM. Anyway I installed the TCM device drivers and all was good. Be sure to make a list as you download these drivers as the files only have a number, and no name. Give yourself plenty of time to do this thing. I don't think its a one nighter the first time around. I have all the drivers burnt to disk for Allen's and I still don't think I'd sit here and do it all in one evening. Oh and the blue tooth gave me a pain to because I didn't know it had it until I loaded a driver for it. Take your time and you will "Git-R-Done!"

[NxB]

Re: Compaq question

It will work with whatever windows license she has on there. If its pro you need pro retail. It could also be home or possibly media center.

[Player2]

Re: Compaq question

The computer may have a recovery partition on the hard drive, from which you can burn recovery discs or do the whole recovery from the computer.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Compaq question

Good point Player2. I did one that was like that. Had to hit one of the F keys on the boot to go into the recovery mode. Don't remember what F key it was that I hit. If he would put the model # on the post I'd find out for him.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Compaq question

Ok this is what I got from my brother. To get the compaq restore to run here is what you do. This will only kick in and do anything if there is a restore partition on the disk. On the boot repeatedly tap F1, F2, F10 or delete. One of these keys should get you into the compaq restore. I would say that you would tap this thing about the same time as you would if you were trying to get into the BIOS screen. If you get a keyboard failure warning it just means that you tapped too soon in the boot up. If there is no compaq restore you can always use the microsoft Xp restore which is F8. Do this in the same way....

[stevo1210]

Re: Compaq question

I have the laptop here now... it's a Compaq Presario V2417AP with an AMD Sempron 3000+ CPU, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD.... that's pretty okay for todays standards I suppose. It comes with Windows XP Home Install CDs and a driver CD so I'm all set to do a Windows reinstall.

[stevo1210]

Re: Compaq question

Just an update... I finished the job on Sunday night but didn't deliver the laptop back to my friend until the Tuesday. She seems pretty happy with it so I suppose I've done everything correctly. The hardest part was backing up all her files and emails because some files were corrupted, but apart from that everything else was easy as pie.

[Wizard]

Re: Compaq question

That one is mobile sempron. It's okay but it is even slower than even a P4. Make sure the cooling is GOOD since the thermal management is really sloppy with AMD-based notebooks and they overheat, die due to half-baked investment in quality AMD notebooks due to putting these notebooks in the lowest price point scale back then. This what was the case with 2 AMD based notebooks, and crappy chipset with *tiny* heatsink perched on the ALi north bridge like too small hat on one's head. Both DEAD as nail. :P

Cheers, Wizard

[stevo1210]

Re: Compaq question

That one is mobile sempron. It's okay but it is even slower than even a P4. Make sure the cooling is GOOD since the thermal management is really sloppy with AMD-based notebooks and they overheat

Oh shit. The CPU fan looked pretty dusty when I had a look at it the other day and I tried my best to vacuum it from the outside with no success. Anyway should I issue a recall for this laptop?

[Wizard]

Re: Compaq question

Yes, very important. This is reason for data corruption as well.

Cheers, Wizard