So, just bought a new laptop for my GF from HP. Anyone who has had to buy one recently knows that it is close to impossible to get one with XP from vendors like Dell and HP. Hp happened to be offering a great price. Good enough to convince me to buy one from them. I have another laptop from them that was built about five or six years ago. Granted it has lasted till now, but besides the fact that it still runs it's horribly designed. The price was good enough for me to consider buying one from them again.
So we decided we were going to attempt to duel boot the sucker. After some frustration, like the fact we realized we had no way to repair the vista boot after installing XP without formatting the entire drive with the restore CD. We went ahead and just left it with vista. Now here is where I start to really bang my head against a wall. I set the partition to the way it was sent to us, with vista on one and a recovery partition on a second. But when i run the recovery it formats the whole drive into a single partition only about half the size the full capacity and then attempts to install vista. It gets to the point where it says it has to reboot to complete the installation. I reboot.
Black screen.
I reboot again.
Black screen.
Reboot.
Black screen.
So i boot gParted from a CD. This is when i noticed the way the restore had changed the partition. First i try to format the drive and set up one large partition.
Reboot, install vista, reboot, blackscreen.
Gparted again, just format drive.
Reboot, install vista, reboot, blackscreen.
Gparted again, i notice that no matter what i do with the partition, the restore is formatting the drive and setting up a partition sized at half the capacity of the drive.
At this point i stop caring, i stick the restore CD in and let it go through the process of installing, formatting, installing, about three times as i enjoy a movie on my desktop. Each time it went though, blackscreen. So i get frustrated and smack the laptop, hitting the CD drive while it reboots. The Cd pops out and it boots into vista. Seems like i now have an inactivated copy of raw vista, without HP bloatware, on the laptop. Neato!
Not really, i go to activate. According to M$, the key is invalid. HP says it is valid. Neither wants to help. HP says i must have installed an invalid copy on the PC and to use the restore CD. M$ just says i'm screwed, and offers to sell me another license. Even after explaining to HP that i used their restore CD, they tell me to try again, then activate.
Yea, the price wasn't good enough to put up with this. Never buying HP again. No reason a restore CD should give this many headaches.
So we decided we were going to attempt to duel boot the sucker. After some frustration, like the fact we realized we had no way to repair the vista boot after installing XP without formatting the entire drive with the restore CD. We went ahead and just left it with vista. Now here is where I start to really bang my head against a wall. I set the partition to the way it was sent to us, with vista on one and a recovery partition on a second. But when i run the recovery it formats the whole drive into a single partition only about half the size the full capacity and then attempts to install vista. It gets to the point where it says it has to reboot to complete the installation. I reboot.
Black screen.
I reboot again.
Black screen.
Reboot.
Black screen.
So i boot gParted from a CD. This is when i noticed the way the restore had changed the partition. First i try to format the drive and set up one large partition.
Reboot, install vista, reboot, blackscreen.
Gparted again, just format drive.
Reboot, install vista, reboot, blackscreen.
Gparted again, i notice that no matter what i do with the partition, the restore is formatting the drive and setting up a partition sized at half the capacity of the drive.
At this point i stop caring, i stick the restore CD in and let it go through the process of installing, formatting, installing, about three times as i enjoy a movie on my desktop. Each time it went though, blackscreen. So i get frustrated and smack the laptop, hitting the CD drive while it reboots. The Cd pops out and it boots into vista. Seems like i now have an inactivated copy of raw vista, without HP bloatware, on the laptop. Neato!
Not really, i go to activate. According to M$, the key is invalid. HP says it is valid. Neither wants to help. HP says i must have installed an invalid copy on the PC and to use the restore CD. M$ just says i'm screwed, and offers to sell me another license. Even after explaining to HP that i used their restore CD, they tell me to try again, then activate.
Yea, the price wasn't good enough to put up with this. Never buying HP again. No reason a restore CD should give this many headaches.
