Topic awaiting preservation: WinMe HP Interface

Will be working on a friends computer in the next few days... basic maintenance stuff. They are now over the initial learning curve and want to remove the HP toys-bells whistles etc. Just get down to the WinMe UI. As I recall however.... not 'all' of the HP stuff can be removed. Anyone know for sure? I just remember that the HP UI was clumsey as hell...or that everytime you turned around some wizrd type thing was trying to help..drove me NUTS!!

Anyway... any help... point to a site... greatly appreciated.

My advice: Back up everything that they need and fdisk the hard drive, but I dunno if you want to do that.

Wouldn't the best way to do this be to make backups of what they *do* care about, and then reformat and reinstall windows?

If I can avoid the 'format'... I'd like to because I'd then have to reinstall everything but if that's what it comes to... I'll do it.

Well, I mean, it depends on how much crap there is you want to get rid of. If it's just a few things, then you can try to uninstall them, but weigh the installation time you'll spend after a format versus the uninstallation time without doing a format, and decide which way you want to go.

If it's Win ME on an HP machine.. then formatting and reinstalling the OP system will just put all th HP stuff back on exactly as it was before.. as all the HP software is spliced with the ME on the system disk. You will be back where you started.. It's a hell of a lot of fiddling to separete the two... ME/HP generic is a bitch...

^ Damn! I was afraid of that. There ought to be a law against that kinda crap. When you say a lot of work separating the two can I assume you're talking about rooting thru the registry?

I probably wasn't asking the right questions but I couldn't find anything about this on google. Ah well I'll do what I can.
thnx.

eliminate the other drive...

...or is that not an option?


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Just keep in mind that if it is a laptop some of those bells and whistles may be helpful.

I just bought a Tohiba, and wiped it immediately. Then I had to go back and get some extras for the FN key functions. This is IMO the easiest solution. Plus, if it's an older computer you get the added benefits of a fresh install.

HP over here as well.
I just checked Add/Remove and the HP junk is listed.
Of interest: hp center, hp instant support, hp memories disc, and hp toolkit.
There are a few other hp things, but those are the main junk ones.
I'm not sure, but I think one of those runs the extra buttons on the keyboard. Not that we use them, mind you.

Well, I had to do my brother's HP recently and it had all the built in sound/video card modem.. etc... we put XP pro on it but all the original hardware drivers were hidden in the ME/HP instalation disk. There was no option to install the drivers separately/individually.. so I had to almost reverse engineer the disk, bizzarre cab extractions to dig the drivers and stuff out and install everything manually as they were not available on the net. It took me a while but I did it. I could not find any help online either, just people in the same dilema.. ...and when I contacted HP themselves about this issue.. they just ignored me. Even if you put new sound/video card or whatever on the HP board.. it will still try and dump the old drivers in right next to any mew ones.. and then it will always be telling you some kind of error massage about hardware/driver conflicts. I had to do some real brain surgery on his machine. Fortunately I am usd to these Frankenstien activities... but I would not wish this task on my enemies... (of which I have none)...

My advice? Never buy a machine with closed architecture... ....or prepare to get into neuro-surgery...



[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 11-04-2003).]