XP Pro Upgrade from HP Home Does Not Work
Kurt M. Sanger
list of requirements directly from Alfred University. We
checked them all off to verify that we were going to be
compliant. Beth chooses the HP Pavilion ze1210 because
she liked the blue lights and buttons. Asked store
personal if XP Pro Upgrade was compatible with laptops.
Was assured that there were no problems upgraded to XP
Pro. Explained that in the past laptops had issues
because I thought that they had special drivers. Was
reassured that all of those problems are work out and
history. Felt good about our purchase.
7/31/02 called the store before we opened up the software
and asked for the computer support because we noticed the
XP Pro upgrade did not list XP Home as an initial starting
point. We were told that it was not a problem. Again we
felt good about our purchase and proceeded to open
everything up.
Original XP Pro Upgrade and Office Installed 8/3/02.
Some problems at home with IE6 but it didn’t seem
abnormal. IE6 quit. IE6 rarely froze up the computer.
Beth to school 8/21/02. Plugged into Alfred’s network.
Connected to email. Said goodbye. Beth was early on
campus to try out for sports.
8/22/02. Beth reports a few problems but she was not
using the computer much because of tryouts. Eat, Tryout,
Sleep. Etc.
8/28/02 Beth registered for classes. Still have
intermittent problems but not using it much.
9/02/02 Beth’s Classes start.
9/03/02 Beth calls and says that the laptop keeps
crashing. Specifically she was receiving file not found
at cold boot. Plus IE6 would disappear with no error
message. Plus IE6 would freeze up the whole computer.
She needed to power down and up to continue.
9/06/02. Beth says she can not get her homework done
online because of computer problems. She starts her list.
IT guys at school work on the problem. Drive re-imaged 5
times. We look for phone numbers. Call Best Buy and were
told to write down the error messages and bring in the
system.
9/14/02. Beth gets a ride and brings the computer home.
We bring it into Best Buy. Jason finds that we need a
BIOS upgrade. Installs Bios, re-images drive. Computer
boots with no errors. We left the store feeling good
about the service that Jason performed. Jason assured us
that XP Pro will run on this PC with no problems, and that
the trouble we were seeing must be due to a hardware
issue. We run for two hours with no errors, load XP Pro.
Run for another two hours with no errors. Load Office
Pro. Doesn’t register properly.
9/15/02 Call Microsoft on Sun at noon and we were told to
register by phone. Office loaded. System runs for
another two hours with no errors.
9/16/02 Beth is back at school and sends me an email that
she has registry restored warnings. File not found at
boot errors. IE6 disappears and IE6 freezes the computer.
9/21/02 Beth gets another ride home. We install Sandra
and run a burn in test to check for hardware issues. The
only issue found is that one out of seven network tests
errors with the message that the packet was too large. We
try updating Windows and were told to download SP1.
Called HP and they said that yes this should help fix IE6
and boot-up problems. SP1 download failed after two
hours. Could not find the site referenced in the error
message for problems with the download. Called HP back.
Was given instructions to get to a page where we could
download the service pack and install offline. Downloaded
package. Installed with errors. Restored to Friday
9/20/02. Installed SP1 with errors. Called HP. Was told
to restore to Friday, uninstall SP1 and reinstall SP1.
Installed with no errors. Ran 6 hours with no errors.
Ran Sandra again with little trouble. Just obtained the
network error 1 out of 7 tries. Did not test the DVD
because we didn’t have a CD with a large enough file.
9/22/02 Machine booted with registry issues. Machine
booted with file not found. Called HP. Disabled most of
the startup utilities using msconfig. Booted okay 3
times. Booted the machine 7 more times ½ hour apart and
cleanly booted 1 time. Obtained registry corrupted,
critical errors, file not found. Called HP, was told to
uncheck all items in msconfig. Did not solve the
problem. HP told us that they did not support OS upgrades
and that they were done with this problem report.
9/23/02. Came in to Best Buy and was seen by David.
David told me for the first time that you may not upgrade
Home to Pro. That you must do a complete install. Did
not get our money back for the laptop, XP Pro upgrade, and
Office XP. I showed David the HP web info claiming that
Microsoft Device Drivers do not work on the ze1210. I
explained that every HP service agent I talked to told me
we had a device driver problem, that was common, and that
we had to figure out which one was the problem and
eliminate it. I also tried to show him pages where not
using the HP driver that was provided by HP ruined the
hardware, and HP does not warranty any OS upgrades nor the
hardware failures that occur from their subsequent use.
Also tried to show David a page where HP states that by
upgrading the OS we now have to go to Microsoft for
support. This makes me mad because Microsoft never
answers any of my email questions, nor do they provide a
pone number where I may call in with questions or ask for
support without charging additional money. We already
bought HP’s warranty with the computer plus the extended
warranty from Best Buy. Now we need to pay Microsoft more
money because their software didn’t work correctly?
David installed XP Pro completely. We no longer have the
software that came on the original notebook including
Norton Antivirus. David gave me an OEM disk of Norton
Security Tools. David told me that our Best Buy 3 yr
Warranty did not cover the OS upgrade nor any software
issues. Left the store unhappy. I did not believe that
we were going to be successful. I believe that we have
violated our warranties by upgrading the OS which we were
not informed of at the time of purchase.
We went home and registered XP Pro, Installed SP1,
Installed Office Pro, and tried to install Norton Security
Tools. Norton fails to download and install anti-virus
definitions and anti-virus upgrades.
The hard disk makes a clicking noise at bootup. It sounds
like the head is being overdriven into a fixed stop. This
noise was not apparent with the original HP software.
In addition to Norton Anti-virus, we are missing the
following applications. Quicken Financial Center, Corel,
Earthlink 5.0 lite, Wild Tangent My Games, Intervideo
WinDVD, HP RecordNow, and MusicMatch Jukebox 6.1.
Plus the one touch buttons do not work. I don’t know how
many of these programs my daughter will eventually use. I
have not used many of them before. However we were sold
the original notebook with all of the above and that is
what we expected we were buying. Its extremely annoying
that the pretty blue buttons currently do not do anything.
Today; I am still not satisfied with what we have. Even
if the hard disk driver can be fixed we won’t know if we
have another driver issue or are causing harm to some of
the components. Plus we do not have an easy method to
restore this PC to XP Pro should the need arrive. I’m
tired of reinstalling Pro and Office and Norton. We never
expected this to happen with our new purchase. Especially
after spending over two thousand dollars and buying the
upgraded service contract. I’m convinced that unless we
buy a laptop with XP Pro already installed there is no
guarantee that it is going to work and be supported in the
future.
Matt Hardy
that knew what they were talking about. You had XP Home that was
pre-installed, an OEM version. You cannot upgrade from home oem to pro
retail version. Oem version installs do not support this. That is why you
had so many problems. Also all the programs you lost were also
pre-installed, oem version. Once you wipe the harddrive, and clean install
retail version of XP pro you will lose all those oem programs. They only
come on a cd or stored on the harddrive. Your first mistake was buying a
computer and getting advise from some high school kid working at Best Buy.
Second mistake was buying an oem version of home, if you knew you really
needed pro. Your two choices are to re-format and re-load the oem version,
stick with it, and upgrade to sp1 or if you need pro re-format and get rid
of the oem version and install pro. You can't go from home oem version to
retail pro version.
MH
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