Extracting device drivers from vista?

[leighayn]

I have come across yet another HP FUBAR, anybody remember the tattooing of drives, and the normal bloat of the almighty hp/compaq. I have received an HP Pavilion a1720n, running an asus P5lp-LE motherboard. Long story short, it will only load HP's Version of Vista since the ata drivers are imbedded in the install disks. You can't get then from Asus, and intel has only kludgy executables that load down on a floppy(which you can't install). So I am hoping that installling the original OS and then pulling the drivers off that I need and slipstreaming them in to XP for the customer will work. Any ideas on this one? Can I just load the drivers into XP Pro? BTW the customer went from Win98 to Vista, and hates every minute of it. Had it into Geek Squad 4 times, and the thing still hangs. So they are now insistent on XP. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but not paid for! ;)

[PatrickB]

I'm not sure about the rest of the process you describe, but you can backup and reinstall drivers using http://www.drivermax.com/

-- Patrick B

[Tweak]

I prefer Driver Magician for driver backups personally, and locating a portable version is best...not the Lite version though. ;)

[bytebuster]

I have come across yet another HP FUBAR, anybody remember the tattooing of drives, and the normal bloat of the almighty hp/compaq. I have received an HP Pavilion a1720n, running an asus P5lp-LE motherboard. Long story short, it will only load HP's Version of Vista since the ata drivers are imbedded in the install disks. You can't get then from Asus, and intel has only kludgy executables that load down on a floppy(which you can't install). So I am hoping that installling the original OS and then pulling the drivers off that I need and slipstreaming them in to XP for the customer will work. Any ideas on this one? Can I just load the drivers into XP Pro? BTW the customer went from Win98 to Vista, and hates every minute of it. Had it into Geek Squad 4 times, and the thing still hangs. So they are now insistent on XP. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but not paid for! ;)

Win 98? How old IS that HP anyway? If it's THAT old, just tell him to buy a new PC, it would probably be cheaper than several hours of your time.

Oh, I get it, he bought a HP running Vista and now wants XP. I don't think that's possible. Upgrade his old Win98 PC (if he still has it) and put XP on it. If he doesn't have it, Emachines and Lenovo are still selling XP desktops. They are cheap, but they fulfill a need. I saw them at Frys here in CA, I know they don't have Frys there but he can go to frys.com and have one sent to him.

[JosephLeo]

I think anything running Windows 98 can be easily be beat by a Mini-ITX Atom 330...no even 230 board. Go to newegg and build him a custom one for only $200 + OS, he'll love it because it's so much faster than his old one. Put a $50 markup on it and you got yourself a quick half-note.

[leighayn]

Hey Guys thanks for the info. Have called customer and offered a "Loaner" machine until I can get theirs to do what they want it to. Appearently this exact machine configuration is causing all kinds of problems, and I would love to find out how to make it do what I want(not unlike my husband ;). Until then I will close this thread. And will repost with answer. Again I can not thank you enough!:)