Messed my computer up
 

I have a few year old HP G60 laptop running Vista. It's just a house computer but it does get some use. It has been running terrible lately so I decided to restore it back to factory with the discs to start fresh.

I went into the manuals and junk drawer and found the hp packet and discs and reloaded it and then reloaded the drivers disc. Windows booted up ok but none of my drivers worked...no wifi..no sound.

Turns out I grabbed the windows xp disc and drivers from my old hp mini that died 2 years ago, my wife saved the documents.

I found the original G60 docs and of course vista didn't need a disc at all, there is a built in utility for that saved on the hd.

Now what? I have no vista disc, no drivers, and windows xp that doesn't work. I could live with xp if all the drivers worked but the disc drive doesn't work and neither does the Internet.


Long story short...it's my wife's fault and in no way related to lack of SA on my part.



.......posted from my iPad.

If it has a USB port, you can transfer the driver files after you download to another pc

Get a new computer and get rid of the wife.......
;)

USMCFLYR

Might be cheaper!! :D

When you say disc drive doesn't work, I assume you mean CD/DVD, not HDD.

Did you print out all the list of hardware devices before wiping it clean? If so you all you need to do is find the make/model of the ethernet card, download the driver from another PC and USB it over. That should get you on the internet.

Assuming you XP disc was older than SP3, next step will be to manually find and download XP SP3 from the microsoft site (automatic updates won't work without SP3). Then you can run automatic updates. Choose custom and accept the high priority updates. There will also be optional hardware and software updates...with a little luck XP will have found most of the drivers you need for critical hardware, so accept those too (they'll be listed under hardware).

You can also probably download drivers for that unit from HP...they should be listed under that model number IIRC.

Worst case, you can probably get the CD/DVD working by loading a generic driver.

I'd email you SP3 but it's way too big.

Thanks guys..when my little one goes down I'll tackle the project again.

Update:
I went on my work computer and downloaded the wireless driver to a thumb drive and was able to transfer that to the broken computer. That computer can now go online which greatly eases the ability to locate and download drivers.

The only issues I have run into on a few items is that when HP asks me to select the operating system, the only options are windows 7 and vista. Many of the drivers are compatible with XP, some are not.

So far the ones that are not I google with "XP" and can find something different.


Another question...

I see I can download the vista recovery discs and drivers for 15 bucks from HP. Since I wiped the original system and now have a crappy, older version of XP would those even work if I spent the money? I am just wondering since I wouldnt even be "recovering" Vista anymore if it would actually require a complete install disc.

My hard drive just died (took it to a computer shop; they said "It's dead"). Installed a new drive, but it was going to take a while to contact HP/Compaq to get the Windows 7 re-installed. Fortunately, I had a backup of all my important stuff.

I asked about Linux; tech told me he really liked it. Not only free, but far less vulnerable to viruses/worms/etc.

Slightly different format, but it still can open all my old files. So far, I like it.

Just an option.

Linux + open office should work great for email and web browsing.

Other applications like many games (or DoD websites which only work in IE, and never the latest version) will likely require the MS crap.

I'm now more or less fully functional.

I'm going to stick with XP. Vista stunk anyway and since XP stinks slightly less ill just stay, it's a home computer anyway with little use.

No sound yet, only error generic beeps. Installed sound driver and it shows enabled yet under system settings and sounds it shows "no devices". Under the hardware tab the card is there, drivers up to date and enabled.

I'm guessing I'm missing a driver that isn't necessarily related to the sound card that tells it all to communicate and play nice with each other.