HP desktop with Win8, can I run XP on the thing?

[Kev Williams]

The wife bought me a great computer for xmas, HP desktop, Win8-64bit, quad processor, 8gigs ram, 1tb drive, it's super-fast and will be a great upgrade from my 10 year old E-machines.

I really like the HP except for one thing:

I cannot load any of my NH laser drivers or the GT Smartstream driver to run my IS400 and IS7000 machines. If I can't figure out how to load them, it will be a 3-step process to save my job, open it on another computer, and run the job from IT...

phooey..

My question: I have half a dozen 40gig hard drives kicking around here, can I install XP Pro on a separate drive, install it in the HP as a slave, have it boot the slave first, and have the computer run XP from it? Or will HP and/or Microsoft have figured out how to prevent me from doing just that?

I'll not rant, but I'd sure like to! ;)

any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

:)

[Michael Dedon]

I was told NO. HP structured their hardware around WIN8, not just the OS. Google it and there's more discussion but nothing I found that's helpful unless someone has found a way since July when I last tried.

[David Masters]

I doubt HP would support a native Windows XP on their newer systems. It's doubtful that the drivers to interface with the hardware will work in Windows XP. What you might look at is downloading Microsoft's Hyper-V and run Windows XP within the Hyper-V virtual machine. I have no experience with this because I use a Mac, but I run Windows XP and Windows 7 in a virtual machine on my Mac. I did a quick search and here is a link that talks about how to set up Hyper-V to run Windows XP.

www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/install-windows-xp-in-windows-8-client-hyper-v/6732/

Dave

[Greg R Bradley]

I would look at this as you are trying to use a home computer for your business. HP was always pretty clear in dividing consumer electronic from computers for their dealers. One of my businesses has been a HP dealer for about 20 years. Consumers have always been confused. Places like Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot are authorized to sell consumer electronics but not computers. It gets confusing because a place like Best Buy could take an order for an HP computer online and it could be shipped to you even though they aren't authorized to have it in their store. HP has changed their website around recently and made a top menu that says "For Home", "For Work".

If you look under "For Home", you will find that Microsoft has pressured HP in offering those "computers" with ONLY Windows 8. If you look under "For Work" and look at Desktops you will find 55 Win7 vs 4 Win8. Laptops are 101 Win7 vs 11 Win8. The high end laptops in their Mobile Workstation line are 100% Win7.

I have lots of computers in businesses that have applications that require WinXP. In the last year, we have installed about 20 new HP units with XP and around 60 new units with Win7. None with Win8, of course as it is basically useless in a business. It is slightly tougher in the last month or two to order new units with drivers for XP but that is to be expected.

[Kev Williams]

I didn't think it was promising...

My old Casmate programs- I have 3 now- require WinME or older... they won't run on XP because of the dongles (the LPT ports are divorced from the OS and won't "read" the dongles). Because Casmate is FAR and AWAY superior to ANY THING else I've tried as far as vectorizing and editing black & white artwork, I have to keep an old Win98se computer on hand. A few years ago my son and I forced Win98 onto an IBM thinkcentre that was built to run XP. We got it to work eventually, but what a nightmare, and it never did work RIGHT.

I need to look into that Hyper-V thing I guess, maybe that would work. I do know that, while the "compatibility" thing DOES help with loading my older programs, it's bupkis for older drivers...

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

My old Casmate programs- I have 3 now- require WinME or older... they won't run on XP because of the dongles (the LPT ports are divorced from the OS and won't "read" the dongles).

It has been years since I needed to do this, but some times you can go into the BIOS of the computer and get the LPT port to work. I used to do this all the time in order to get legacy equipment working on newer computers. Wish I could give you exact steps, but I put that life behind me several years ago and I'm starting to forget all those little bits of unnecessary info now!

Using virtual terminals can be very hit and miss when dealing with older equipment. Most of the time it's a miss. I found it's best to do a dual boot if possible and boot into a true XP instead of a virtual XP. Even better, is to keep an old workhorse computer with XP in use just for that equipment. ... if you have room for that! :-)

[Kev Williams]

As for running my old machines, what I've been doing for a few years now, is to use one computer as a "print server"- Right now that computer is an old IBM ThinkCentre (the one mentioned above, with XP put back on), with extra LPT and serial ports added. The machines act like any shared printer. But all computers sharing the machine needs a driver. My old engraving machines only require a 'generic text' driver, so I'm hoping I can at least run those eventually. I say eventually because while I've been able to load the generic drivers into Win8, it refuses to acknowledge the existence of any machine. And Win8 refuses to run the print driver setups I have for my NH-ULS and LS900 lasers. WAYY frustrating...

And nearly as frustrating, I don't have the correct version of Win8 to run the Hyper-V... heavy sigh... ;)

[Matt Meiser]

You could try VMWare Player or VirtualBox.

[Prashun Patel]

will your programs run on Win7 64bit? That might be an easier retrofit.

[Duane Meadows]

Most likely at a minimum, you will have to disable Secure Boot in the bios to get even Win 7 to install... XP? Doubt it. With support ending(security updates, etc) I would not want it on the internet anyway. I use Virtualbox, but hardware dongles are likely to be problematic with virtualization

[Jim Becker]

I do not recommend you try to reload the machine with XP...unlikely that there will be XP drivers and there may also be other hardware conflicts that XP will not like. It will also be increasingly insecure if the machine has any connection to the Internet. Rather, use a virtual machine setup and load XP into a VM to run your gear that requires XP. Many folks who require XP to run devices are just using older hardware dedicated to the function, too.

I use virtualization so I can also run Windows on my Mac...which I need to support Quicken. (The Mac version of Quicken is, um...substandard) Virtualization is a great way to support multiple operating systems on a single machine.

Duane does bring up a good point that if your laser software requires a hardware dongle (typically to enforce licensing), virtualization may be a non-starter. In that case, use an older computer compatible with XP to run the gear and your new computer for all the other stuff.

[Matt Meiser]

Agreed. The hardware dongles are a likely complication with visualization. Does the new computer even have a parallel port? That is another dying/dead technology. I ran into problems on a software upgrade 8 years ago because the client's new server didn't have a parallel port and they still had a dongle for the software which the vendor was phasing out at the time. We had to scramble to get them converted to a software key.

[Chuck Wintle]

The wife bought me a great computer for xmas, HP desktop, Win8-64bit, quad processor, 8gigs ram, 1tb drive, it's super-fast and will be a great upgrade from my 10 year old E-machines.

I really like the HP except for one thing:

I cannot load any of my NH laser drivers or the GT Smartstream driver to run my IS400 and IS7000 machines. If I can't figure out how to load them, it will be a 3-step process to save my job, open it on another computer, and run the job from IT...

phooey..

My question: I have half a dozen 40gig hard drives kicking around here, can I install XP Pro on a separate drive, install it in the HP as a slave, have it boot the slave first, and have the computer run XP from it? Or will HP and/or Microsoft have figured out how to prevent me from doing just that?

I'll not rant, but I'd sure like to! ;)

any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

:)
if you go into device manager and then specify the driver? plug the device in first and then, in device manager select the driver....

[Myk Rian]

Use Virtual box. Easy to install and use. I tried the MS version but gave up. It isn't supported now anyway. There is a Vbox forum with lots of info and help.
forums.virtualbox.org

[Kev Williams]

First off, thanks to everyone for the advice and suggestions! :)

Dongles aren't the problem-- I have 2 Gravostyle 5.3 dongles and 1 Gravostyle 7 discovery dongle- I DID have to run the compatibility thing to install the 2 G-style programs, but they run fine. I just can't load the laser drivers or GT-Smartstream drivers! G-style also runs my older machines, and while I do have the generic drivers installed, I haven't tried to actually run the machines yet, getting ready to do that...

****UPDATE****! While working on this post, I found a fix online!! At least for my GT-smartstream drivers! The problem is "forced" driver compatibility with Win8, the fix is to turn it off, and it's pretty easy if you know how! Here's the fix (some of this is from memory, so the verbiage may not be exact, sorry!)

1. Mouse over the lower-left corner, then select Settings.
2. Select Change PC Settings.
3. Choose General.
4. Scroll to the bottom and select Restart now under the Advanced startup area.
5. Select Troubleshoot.
6. Select Advanced Options.
7. Select Startup Options (mine said something besides "options" but same difference)
8. Select the "disable driver signing" option
9. Select Restart.

Now Device Driver Signing should be disabled-- it's supposed to work until reboot- And it DID let me install my GT-smartstream driver, and it runs my IS400 P&S perfectly! YAY!!!

As for my older machines, even though it loads the generic text drivers, AND it finds the shared machines on my network, I keep getting "cannot open [whichever machine I choose]"... Another security thing I'm sure, hopefully I can figure that out too..

I'm about to try to install my laser drivers now... fingers crossed!

[Brian Elfert]

All of our software at work which still requires dongles are using USB dongles now. We actually have a network device from Digikey to share USB ports over the network. We have the network USB device so we can run this software on virtual machines that have no access to a physical USB port.