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Putting XP on an Emacine

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MadSkillzMan

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2003
Location
Cleveland OHIO
I put this in the hardware section since i know Emacines have slightly different hardware settings so you can add your own. If this belongs on another section, let me know and sry mods.

Ok, heres the scenario. My girlfriend has a 800mhz, 128MB RAM,20gig HDD Emacine from best buy. (i know i know, she wasnt my gf when she got it, otherwise she wouldnt have it). Well its beaten since it never had a firewall and best buy did a dance on it, so its incredbily slow, wont even go online. So i figure ill upgrade it to winxp. Normally i wouldnt think there is a problem with this, but a few freinds have OEM computers, and they wont take XP sometimes. THey just freeze or whatever. The sites will say cannot run XP. I heard this from HP, a few emacines, and some other one. I dont want to go formatting her hard drive to find out i cant put XP on it. Only ME or 2k. 2k is nowhere near as bad as ME, but im just curious.
 
There is no doubt that Emachines use the cheapest hardware availible. With that said, there is no compelling reason that XP would not work. However, there is something to be had for keeping it OEM. Surely there are system disks to reload the original OS right? If not, there may be a hiddem partition with that stuff on it. With HP, F10 boots you into the hiddem partition.
 
Hmm alright. I HOPE it doesnt have a partition like that. Its windows ME, its nothing but problems. I have it on my test rig along with linux. Nothing but problems.

i mite use Win2k then.
 
MadSkillzMan said:
Hmm alright. I HOPE it doesnt have a partition like that. Its windows ME, its nothing but problems. I have it on my test rig along with linux. Nothing but problems.

i mite use Win2k then.

XP should work just fine if you upgrade to 256MB of RAM. Only format the C: partition to be sure you don't lose the oppertunity of reverting back to ME. To make partitions "hidden" computer companys just use a UNIX partition so it's not viewable in windows. Also if it has a recovery CD, that doesn't neceserily mean it doesn't have a hidden partition with the factory image on it. I restored a compaq to the factory state with a recovery CD but I could tell it was using a seperate partition on the HD because for the most part the CD-ROM wasn't even being accessed. The "recovery" partition wasn't hidden though, it was formatted with FAT32 and totally visible in windows.
 
i installed XP home on a HP Pavillion 7920, the night it was released...


Worked fine.

hint: try addin more ram...... 512 is good. (even for not gaming)
 
Good luck with the upgrade. This is the first time I have heard of hidden partitions, interesting. I also concure that ME is pure crap. I had it on a Dell laptop and it was nothing but problems.
 
Fdisk would allow you to *see* any hidden partitions. You would not be able to read them but I don't think that's what you're looking to do anyway.
 
Well i did it guys. Worked. Went slow and couldnt copy, so i switched CDROM drives. Worked perfectly. Took awhile to install, but now it runs really smooth. Im not done, she hasta come get me so i can do the service pack and printer/scanner and such. But THANKFULLY it worked. XP didnt find ne hidden partitions, and there were 2 restore CDs so im assuming there wasnt one. Thanx guys.
 
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