A940nr | frenchmoustache

Twitter

Thanx @thedinernyc Tweet 2010/09/04

15.December.08 - Monday

Howto: XP install on the Compaq A940NR (A900 Series Notebook)

Compaq A940NR

A couple of months ago I picked up a Compaq A940NR.

While nowhere close to the build or quality of a Mac, for a budget Windows machine it is a great deal for the price with it’s Dual Core 1.8ghz Intel, 17 inch screen, 3 gigs of ram, 200gb hard drive, built in Webcam, 802.11a/b/g, 5 in 1 card reader and DVDR/CDR with Lightscribe.

Too bad you are stuck with Windows Vista out of the box.

When I first picked it up, I ran Windows Vista for about a week and by the end of day 4 wanted to rip my hair out. I did not need a Windows machine at the time (and figured I would just run Windows in VMWare for testing..) so I installed Gentoo Linux.

Gentoo had it’s time, but I now need another machine for running test builds again and VMWare is just not cutting it. The XP install is straight forward, just make sure that the first thing you do is disable Native SATA option in the bios. After that, all the drivers can be found at the links below.

Note: These may or may not work for your A900 model and their may be updates to the drivers. If in doubt, just check the HP/Compaq support site.

Enjoy,

French ;{)

—-
Drivers Installed & Order to install them…