I have 3 HP DC7700s towers. The mobo uses BOTH a sata drive connector AND an IDE drive connector. Can I replace the sata cable with an IDE cable to use an IDE HDD? I also tried to install xp pro on this tower using my DELL cd. All went well ecept that the automated activation phone system rejected the OS as non genuine. I have used this same cd with many DELLs with success. I am now using my secondary DELL to load the OS onto the sata drive using a cable adapter. If all goes well I should be able to reinstall the now loaded sata back into the HP. Hopfully the nic will work as well. DELL CD has never asked for a key or activation used in a DELL tower. Tha fact that this is a sata drive going into a HP should not matter just as any loaded IDE can be used in any tower provided that the drive was loaded in the brand that matched the cd used. Can someone tell me if I am correct or not? Advice is always welcome. If the nic refuses to work in the HP I will need to install either a usb nic or card. I have only had to do that twice on a DELL when the on board nic refused to work. the card,or usb always worked. Move as needed.
if it has ide connectors you can use an ide hard drive.what are the specs of these towers?windows 7 might be a better choice considering support is running out for xp.
You can download Windows XP SP3 and save it to a CD for future references with all the updates on it. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10767
one of these towers had a cd of sp3 in the drive. What I thought was a second IDE connector was not. It is slightly shorter and what I thought was an APG slot does not appear to be as my video card will not fit. There is onboard video so it doe not matter. These boards are quite different than my DELL boards. The drives are SATA. One is password protected which I will have to live with. I changed the password to something easier. I ended up loading one of the hdds using my DELL plus cable adapter and then reinstalling it into the HP. I also needed to add a nic card as the onboard nic refused to work. It IS turned on.
moved to correct forum as not a windows issue. sata cable to sata drive, ide cable to ide drive as the 2 cables are not pin compatible.
After I posted my mobo/drive issues, I was able to reload the OS onto the sata drives using my DELL cd in the HP also using the HP COAs for activation on line. It worked as intended. Used all 5 COAs one at a time. Success each time. As far as the board goes, the APG slot is not that. What it is I do not know. What I thought was a second IDE slot was a FLOPPY slot although there is no drive installed. I have 2 spare SATAS that I loaded the OS to. I will keep them in case I come across a tower that uses them. Live and learn. All is well. These are now my third string spares.
floppy connector is 34 pins with usually 1 missing 2nd from end. disable the drive & connector in the bios if not installed if possible.
The bios "KNOWS" the floppy is not installed and ignores its non presence. No error. Also ther is only one IDE connector for the opticals as the HDD is SATA. I suppose I could use the one IDE for one optical and one HDD. The SATA wpold remain unconnected. In my case I use 2 opticals on the one ribbon, both set to cable select. Works like a charm. Since there is on board video I am mystfied as to what this EXTRA slot might be if not for APG. This tower is from 2005, while my DELLS are from 2000. I picked up a tower branded "GLOBAL". It turned out to be an early SONY. All kinds of strange slots and a host of BLUE jumpers on the board. It was not functional but good for scavanging. Odd psu also. Thanks for the insight.
is not AGP but is pci\e 16x videocard slot. •ATI RADEON X1300 256MB full-profile PCIe Card, DVI w/TV •ATI RADEON X1600XT 256MB full-heigth PCIe Card, dual DVI w/TV-out can also handle intel dual core cpu. http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...kId=101&prodSeriesId=3232028&prodTypeId=12454
