German laptop - help!

[BTB 500]

As a workaround how about installing XP (do not need to activate or register for 30 days) and then upgrade using the copy that you buy that way.

I did consider that, but there's a fair chance the upgrade would only work on an activated copy of XP. I can get a full OEM version of Win 7 Home for £70, which would probably be a safer bet. After all, I am going to replace the keyboard

 

[neilz]

Linux Mint...

Much better than Ubuntu - have used both for extended periods of time

 

[BTB 500]

Well I managed to get a new copy of Windows XP for £17.50, going to put that on (no doubt it won't be so simple?!) and see how it runs with that. Then either stay on XP or get a student upgrade from XP to Win 7.

Any tips/pitfalls on installing XP? There's nothing on the netbook I want to keep ... would like to wipe everything and start from scratch.

 

[HughJarse]

As the machine didnt have a disc with it ( not all do) maybe there's a copy of win 7 on the laptop itself waiting to be burned to a disc - OR waiting on a partition of the drive to be reinstalled... AND ... maybe if you reinstall it, during installation it may give you the option of choosing language?

 

[HughJarse]

OR... buy recovery discs from HP reseller here
https://www.best2serve.com/page/rcd_landing

 

[gaz_l]

Well I managed to get a new copy of Windows XP for £17.50, going to put that on (no doubt it won't be so simple?!) and see how it runs with that. Then either stay on XP or get a student upgrade from XP to Win 7.

Any tips/pitfalls on installing XP? There's nothing on the netbook I want to keep ... would like to wipe everything and start from scratch.

Bill,

The thing you might fall foul of is the fact that being a netbook, it won't have an inbuilt optical drive and you will have to use a USB one. I don't know how recent the version of XP you managed to get is, but from memory support for USB mass storage was patchy on the earlier versions. I'm assuming the netbook is new-ish, and therefore the USB drive will be supported in BIOS, but you may have to have a provide a driver as part of the Windows install process, and in this case you will also need a USB floppy drive as the optical drive won't be recognised..

Good luck!

Cheers,

Gaz

 

[BTB 500]

The XP disc is XP Home Edition SP3, so I'm hoping it will be OK! The netbook does just have an external USB DVD drive.

 

[BTB 500]

As the machine didnt have a disc with it ( not all do) maybe there's a copy of win 7 on the laptop itself waiting to be burned to a disc - OR waiting on a partition of the drive to be reinstalled... AND ... maybe if you reinstall it, during installation it may give you the option of choosing language?

I think Win 7 Starter is supplied as a language-specific version, and the notebook is a German model (Mini 210-1021eg - only listed on the HP.de website).

 

[BTB 500]

Quick update on this.

First installed a UK (QWERTY) keyboard, which made life a lot easier. Annoyingly it's not an exact match (physically) for the German one ... there's a gap of a mm or two all round. But it's not really that noticeable, and all works fine.

Downloaded a Win 7 Pro 'upgrade' (from XP or Vista) from software4students - thanks A-Avantgarde. A bit of fiddling around required as it was in .img rather than .iso format, so had to burn to a DVD (rather than using USB stick).

A colleague at work advised that you don't actually have to have XP or Vista installed to use these 'upgrades' - you just need to insert an original disk at the appropriate point. So I ran the install within the German copy of Win 7 ... all went fine and guess what - it never asked for an XP or Vista disk! So I could have saved a bit of money there.

A few issues with the hardware - no WiFi for a start. So cabled it direct to the router to activate the copy of Win 7 and start applying 50+ Windows updates. Got that all done and Microsoft Security Essentials installed (for now), and it all runs pretty well.

Device manager showed an 'unknown' network controller with no driver which I figured was causing the lack of WiFi. Off to HP - Deutschland to look at drivers, guessed at a Broadcom one which seems to have done the trick (need to confirm tonight that I can actually connect via WiFi). Some issues with audio too (mute/vol up/vol down on keyboard not working) so again downloaded a driver from the German HP website which seems to have fixed. Not tried the wireless mouse yet, I'm guessing that will need a bit of tinkering too.

But it's looking pretty good so far - thanks for the help & suggestions guys!

 

[A-AvantGarde]

Sounds like it's going well then, good result - let us know how you get on testing it later.

The HP site is generally very good for driver updates etc.

 

[BTB 500]

The only issue with HP is that the specific model I have is only listed on the German website, so my technical German is improving!

However they did have English manuals for it there, which was a big help when doing the keyboard. And you can select English as a language when looking for drivers.

They have a full set of drivers there for XP too, but I think I'd have needed a LOT of them ... which is why I tried going directly to a UK copy of Win 7!

The machine seems pretty zippy now, I think it was running quite a few HP 'utilities' before which I will try to avoid loading up again. The hard drive is actually 250 Gb, think the C: drive partition is 150 Gb. Not quite sure what I will do with the others, one is labelled 'HP Recovery' so I guess the intention is to put a recovery image in there.

I did find a folder called "windows.old" on the C: drive which seems to contain a copy of all the previously installed programs - nice idea.

 

[neilz]

Google Translate is your friend re technical German! Just copy and paste a web address into the box on the left and it'll translate the webpage for you when you click on "translate"

 

[HughJarse]

Google Translate is your friend re technical German! Just copy and paste a web address into the box on the left and it'll translate the webpage for you when you click on "translate"

Use google chrome browser ( and possibly firefox) and it translates pages on the fly.

 

[neilz]

I'm using Firefox, it doesn't

Chrome can be sporradic - it decides when to put the bar at the top asking to translate

 

[HughJarse]

I'm using Firefox, it doesn't

Chrome can be sporradic - it decides when to put the bar at the top asking to translate

I dont find it sporradic and firefox is an addon - I have a sneeky that the firefox addon i use might be based on google translate though!

 

[BTB 500]

Just to bring this up to date ... the little HP is running really well, and Mrs BTB uses it most evenings now. The 'performance index' thing in Windows went up from (IIRC) 1.4 to 2.3 so it wasn't my imagination that it was a lot more responsive after re-installing Win 7.

It was only £20 to increase the RAM from 1GB to 2GB so I did that this week. As it seems to be a 'keeper' I've also ordered another UK keyboard which I'm hoping will be an exact fit rather than having the slight gap all the way round. And I managed to acquire a (free!) UK mains lead for the power supply, so not having to use a 2-pin adapter for that any more.

Many thanks to everyone who offered help & advice!