thefrozencoder

Programming and Technology blog

Windows 2008 Install Tip for HP Laptops

If you are going to do a manual install of Windows 2008 and or Vista on any HP laptop you probably want to burn the c:SwSetup folder to a DVD/USB Key before you begin. This folder contains all of the original software installed as well as all of the drivers. Once you have installed the OS you can copy the folder back to your C: drive.

Here is a little trick to make the install process easer, create a text file in the c:SwSetup folder and rename it to install.inf. If you are missing drivers for some of your hardware (audio, network lan and wireless) are the usual MIA drivers. Just use the Update Driver feature and make sure you browse for a location and select the c:SwSetup folder, because the *.inf file is present you can do this. The update driver feature will search all subfolders for *.inf files to find a matching hardware device id and install the drivers for it. I do this so that I don’t have to pick each folder separately.

Windows 2008 and Me No More

So I decided that the disappearing mouse issue bothers me to much and went back to Windows XP (but not before making an image of the partition incase I wanted to go back after SP1 is released).

Of course before that I had to try the Vista image that came with the laptop, so I reinstalled it and BOOM, same problem.

Ahh Crap...

Oh wait maybe I’ll install SP1 for Vista and see it that helps. So after several reboots and a half an hour later I came to the conclusion that Yay! The disappearing mouse problem on my HP Laptop with an Nvida chipset using Dual Display is fixed (in my case) by installing Vista SP1. Sorry if that felt a bit wordy but search engines love wordy.