Can I re-build HP/Compaq machines?

Hi - Searched for the answer but no luck... Basically - I picked up 2 mahcines off of EBAY (HP Pavilion xt948-1.6GHz P4 and a Compaq SR1617CL-Sempron 3200+ socket 939) and was curious if I could flatten the boxes and rebuild them with my own XP disks without any severe consequences. I also want to wipe out the hidden HP/Compaq partition on both machines and build them up with the stuff I want.

My question is: will wiping out the secret recovery partitions cause any problems at bootup and will I have any driver issues.

I already rebuilt the HP machine with my own XP Professional CD's and it works great, but I am not sure if I can wipe out the secret manufacturers portion of the harddrive to recapture the space (I am using partition magic). My fear is that at bootup the machine seams to reference the hidden secret partion and then gives me an option to proceed to bios setup after it splashes the HP junk stuff. If I wipe out this partion will I still be able to access the bios settings?

Any help much appreciated - Tom.

 

That partion is used for recovering the system to the state it was shipped as. You can delete it if you want and I think with partion magic you should be able to add it to the partion your using. If for some reason it does not restart after that you need a boot disk and simply do fdisk /mbr and that will fix the master boot record.

 

As xfallout said you wont have any problems deleting the recovery partition,to make life simpler why not just delete the partition while installing XP,format and then continue on with the XP installation

Personally as they are both branded computers they will have licensed copys of windows, I would be interested keeping the current xp installs active by contacting microsoft as to your right to reinstall xp and use the current licenses, rather than spending money on two extra copies of XP which ofcourse you are doing ATM

 

Thanks for the quick feedback. I think that I will just eat the unused partition space and just leave it alone for now. I figure that if I want to resell the boxes I can re-image them from their recovery partitions. I will just re-format the primary drive and re-install the O/S the boxes came with using the license key on the box/manuals. I know that these keys usually reject - but if I use the phone in registration process I believe it will be fine.

Judging from your replies I take it that the HP splash screen and config at system stratup is part of their custom bios config and not coming from the Recovery Partition?

 

yes thats from the bios. Unfortunately. Yeah if you are retailing the boxes out, then leave those partitions in it. You can sell them as "new" The hard drive size eg 60 GB is still going to be 60 GB no matter if it is in one letter or two. So you won't be lying if you said it's got a 60gb hd. hope this eases your mind, I do it all the time.