Recently I bought an HP Pavilion 2315 notebook. It came with Vista Home Premium which I did not like at all.
But trying to install Windows XP as an alternative or dual-boot system was anything but easy. HP did not include any
disk with drivers for Vista or XP; Vista itself was on a separate partition of the 160GB hard disk from where it could be
recovered in case of crash. HP’s support page did include information about the drivers but no instruction how to replace Vista with XP.
Just in case somebody else runs into this problem, here are the steps to replace Vista with XP on the series 2000 HP notebooks:
1. Create a new partition, using Vista’s partition manager; I did not touch the 7GB Vista system partition and left 50GB for the (existing)
files that came with the computer, and the rest (~80GB) blank, ready for XP.
2. Disable the SATA option in the BIOS.
3. Windows XP installed OK. Device manager shows all the hardware bits that are not working.
4. Download the mass storage driver (PRO2KXP.EXE) from Intel (search for it on
http://support.intel.com) and run it
5. Download all hardware drivers for the Series 2000 laptops from HP’s website. They can be found at:
ftp://compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp32501-33000 etc.
SP32646 (run this first!) SP32144 SP32784 SP32839 SP32020 SP32566 SP35444 SP33761 SP35415
SP34510 SP34489
I used another computer to do the downloads and created a driver CD.
6. Install drivers from CD – reboot, reboot, reboot….
7. XP loads without problems and everything works fine, Device Manager is clear. I have not yet set up a dual-boot system but will install a dual-boot manager when I need it.
I believe that this information applies to all series 2000 HP notebooks; for users with other models, search
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc for model.
HP could have saved me all this trouble – one working day – by including a driver disk….
I must say though that when I contacted a support person on their website, she was most courteous and helpful.
Hope this helps somebody.
Regards
Hans