HP Mini 1035NR

[Poppa_Meth]

I have a customer who dropped off an HP Mini 1035NR for me to work on. He's completely screwed it up since a week ago when he got it. Virus plus more virus's trying to fix it. I think it's best to just reformat and reinstall the whole OS.

The questions are:
1) No CD drive. I can hook one up via USB but will Windows XP Home SP3 install from a USB CD drive without any issues? I've never had to do it before.
2) This thing has a SATA HDD, but no SATA drivers for download and I do not have a USB floppy drive. I can't tell from looking at the bios if this thing even needs a SATA driver or if the BIOS takes care of this. The BIOS is so minimal I can't do anything in it.

Any input is appreciated.

[MJA]

check this site since the mini is similar to eee

I think external CD player with the HP recovery CD will work just fine

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewforum.php?id=13

[Poppa_Meth]

Thanks. I'll look it over. I'm not using HPs recovery discs though. They don't send any with it and I don't want to order them if I can help it. I'm planning a clean install from XP CD if possible.

[redwudz]

I'd consider picking up a bus powered USB floppy drive for future problems. I got one free with my HP laptop a couple of years ago and it's handy with some drivers that need to use a floppy to install. It's recognized with most any computer as floppy drive 'A'. It's saved me several times.

I'd agree about a clean install of the XP OS. The factory recovery discs just add all the crapware from HP that most people never use or want. You could toss in the free Open Office for text handling. And maybe Avast, Spybot and Comodo for better security, VLC for video.

And if the PC has a recovery partition like HP laptops, I would be suspicious that some malware may have been placed in there. Repartition/reformat seems the best option, especially if all the MB drivers are available from HP.

[Poppa_Meth]

No partition on this one for recovery. My main concert is the SATA drivers. I'll see what I can do though. I'll use Acronis Disk Director to format and zero fill the drive to make sure any trace of a virus is gone.

[MJA]

I think all new MB got SATA driver on board ,or xp with SP3 will install a generic SATA driver

[Poppa_Meth]

It all worked out fairly well. I found a guide on the net to set up my 2GB pen drive as a bootable drive to instal XP from. I slipstreamed SP3 first and formatted the drive with Acronis (also on a pen drive). No problems seeing the SATA drive. I installed Paragon Drive backup express on the laptop after getting it all set up and made a bootable recovery DVD. With a USB DVD drive I think he can avoid all hassle next time this inevitably happens.

[Astro64]

It all worked out fairly well. I found a guide on the net to set up my 2GB pen drive as a bootable drive to instal XP from. I slipstreamed SP3 first and formatted the drive with Acronis (also on a pen drive). No problems seeing the SATA drive. I installed Paragon Drive backup express on the laptop after getting it all set up and made a bootable recovery DVD. With a USB DVD drive I think he can avoid all hassle next time this inevitably happens.

Can you tell me where you found the guide? My girl's HP mini doesn't get passed the XP logo and it return to get me to Start it in Safe Mode, last know good start, ect... but it goes in the same circle all the time. I want to reinstalled the OS and need help. Thanks, Erik