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Old May 26th 05, 03:04 PM
Ben Myers
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What you are seeing here is the same lack of concern for CONSUMERS as shown by
just about every other name brand computer company. HPaq is the pits when it
comes to supporting computers built for consumers. With business class
computers, they can't quite get away with it, else some enterprise would call up
HPaq Pres Hurd (Carly or Mike in the bad old days) and tell him that a pallet of
HPaq computers is on the loading dock waiting to be returned.

Open up the chassis and examine the ESS sound chip to determine its exact model
number. Then go to the ESS web site and download the drivers for that exact
model. Before doing that however, go to www.intel.com and download both the
chipset drivers and graphics drivers for the 810E chipset. These drivers work
with any motherboard that has an 810E chipset. Install the motherboard chipset
drivers first.

As to the rest, your rant is 1000% correct. Pity that HPaq shows no sign of
ever monitoring usenet groups pertaining to their products. They might actually
learn something, and improve both products and service... Ben Myers

On Thu, 26 May 2005 00:10:55 -0400, erimess wrote:

I'll apologize in advance for the length since I'm sure I won't be
able to make a long story short.

Friend of mine nuked her hard drive due to virus/spyware problems,
unaware that this thing has those tools and such on the D partition.
It was only when she had problems using her factory restore disk that
I got online to their site and figured this out. (Someone needs to
explain the concept to me of the customer having to backup software
that comes with the computer when it should have a disk for it.)

I called customer no-service and had a most delightful conversation.
(That was sarcasm in case you didn't catch it.) I'm a bit confused
over some info I'm reading on the site, but this guy tried to tell me
first of all that she could use the factory restore disk without the
files on the D partition. That sounds like a conflict with what I
read, and furthermore it doesn't work. She always just booted to the
CD before and that worked. Sorry, but I don't recall the error
message she was getting. (Too many conversations and I've lost
track.) This bozo also tried to tell me the quick restore CD the site
spoke of was the startup disk you make with Win98. Yeah, right, like
that's going to put Windows back on for you -- and the factory restore
disk still didn't work even after she used the startup disk to fdisk
and re-partition, format, etc., etc. Besides, what's the key code for
she has? She never got a quick restore disk and she's never needed it
for the factory restore. It *has* to belong to something. And the
guy also told me there was no way to get those system tools back
(which may be true). But apparently you *can* get a quick restore
disk, from what I'm reading on here. He claimed there was nothing we
could do cause they considered her computer obsolete.

So I sent her my old Win98 cause I use XP now, and got that installed
but now are having driver issues. I found her drivers on the site and
she downloaded those. From her last email it appears that at least
she finally has the video working -- or at least she now has 4 color
settings showing up in settings instead of just the generic 16 colors.
I've got her testing that and the modem right now. It appears the
sound is still not working. I had her run a thing that gives me the
hardware profile and it claims it's there, but she's getting no sound.
She said when she ran it, it listed a bunch of files it couldn't find.
She also got a message saying it couldn't find stuff in the
C:\Windows\cab folder. (She put all the driver downloads into the
Windows\temp folder and ran them from there.)

So, my questions a

a) In case she can't get these drivers working, what exactly is that
Quick Restore disk and what does it have on it? Is it just Windows,
or would it include the original drivers and simply install them, does
it have the old system tools on it? Etc. I don't get the difference
between that and the factory restore. She's willing to pay the $10
for it, but we need to know whether this is something she really
needs. She did have trouble getting those other drivers to install
and even so, we're not sure yet if they're working. (I told her I was
going to wait til her next email to post here, but obviously I didn't.
:-)) She's also having "issues" with taking my old Win98. :-) I get
this impression that phone number is actually HP? Just curious since
the customer no-service guy said there was nothing they could do.

b) Does the factory restore disk actually need files that were on the
D partition, because I think she would be perfectly happy to get that
working again without all this driver hassle she's had? I can't find
any other reason for it to not work, because it worked before she
wiped the D partition.

c) Are the system tools available anywhere? She did like using her
user backup thing, though I found her a Powerquest Drive Image on eBay
for cheap, so this is not really a priority.

d) Any ideas on the sound drivers. Why is it looking for them in a
cab folder? The installation instructions online say just to put it
into "a" directory. I'm not quite catching onto the Compaq logic in
all this. I suggested she just create the cab folder and stick the
download in there -- anyone think that would work?

Just in case it's needed, off the hardware profile I had her run:
Presario 5BW122
Intel(R) 810e Chipset Graphics Driver (DC133 FSB133) 4.11.01.1321
[Display adapter]
Compaq MV740 [Monitor] (16.3"vis, May 2000)
ESS Allegro PCI Audio (WDM)
Compaq 56K USB External Fax Modem
HSP56 MicroModem
HSP56 MicroModem #2

Again, sorry for the long-windedness -- yes, I know some was just an
excuse to complain about Compaq. (I think this is worse than what
I've seen with the Pavilion and Packard Hells.) And thank you in
advance.

---
erimess

This is the comfort of everyone: That tho' they
may be said to die, yet their love and devotion
are, in best sense, ever present because immortal.
~William Penn
In memory of my father, 1 Jan 05