[Gman13]

Hi - I have a desktop pavilion t770.uk that was being dumped so I thought I'd try to bring it back to use. Details as follows:-

HP Pavilion T770.uk
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
1 GB DDR Ram
200 GB Drive ( Not present See below)
DVD Drive
DVD Writer
NVidia Geforce FX5500 256 Mb video memory
Windows XP Home (Not Present See below )
Works Suite 2004 ( Not Present See below )
IEEE 1394 Firewire Interface
Wireless 802.1 1b/g with software Access Point
TV and FM Radio tuner card with remote control
Wireless Keyboard and mouse

Now the problem, as shown above , the hard drive has been removed from the box, so no operating system , software , driver etc to work cards , keyboard mouse etc. No setup disc/recovery discs.

So things I need - Monitor (have spare 15" monitor)

New hard drive will be buying one (going for SATA 320 Gb)

Operating Systems - Buying XP Home , as this was installed originally , but was thinking this will give me operating system but will not operate the additional cards in the desktop. Went onto Hp site and lots of info about updating drivers etc also about restoring operating system when new hard drive fitted. But then stated on most Hp's the recovery was loaded on the original hard drive as a partition. I've no way of getting hold of the original hard drive. So my only hope is of finding a set of original recovery set up discs for this computer.

Before I go ahead and get hard drive/ xp home could someone just confirm that my thinking is correct.

Also does anyone know when I could purchase a set of discs ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, new to this game but seems a shame to dump this box with all the cards/motherboard inside when it could be brought back to life again.

Any info greatly received as will help with my new learning curve in computing.

Thanks.

[Cew27]

ok so you want to install the same version of windows on the pc ? this can be done but i dont know the specifics
also if you want to test the hardware you can download and burn a knopix live cd (linux boots from disk and runs entireley on ram) no harddrive needed

[mcbee]

You can fit a new hard drive and install an operating system as long as all the hardware is working. You will then need the motherboard drivers which you can download from the HP site. You may have an initial problem if windows does not have the LAN driver. You could temporarily install a PCI card with a driver and access the internet that way. You may need to download the Graphics card driver from the maker's site.

[Gman13]

Hi Cew27 & Mcbee

Thanks for you reply's - quick up date. I friend kindly lent me and old 40 Gb drive to put in my
machine to see if I could get it going, brought XP home and installed that. My friend also went to the HP site and downloaded all the Original Fall 2004 drivers (presume 2004 was when this computer came out ) . Loaded chipset , lan drivers as suggest by mcbee, also couple more, keyboard / mouse and graphic card.

Pressed the start button and what do you know all things seem to work with a few teething troubles, plus screen prompts, must have answered correctly as it appears all systems go.

So next course of action is to buy the new hard drive and repeat again what I did to load everything
onto new drive.

Just like to say thanks for your info , gave me the confidence to go for it, one computer saved from the landfill.

Cheers