Help With HP Envy 15

[teamcrunk]

Hi, my Hp Envy crashed i guess because of a virus, so i used a Program to fully Erase the HD. I cant find my recovery disk or my envy flashdrive. It came with Windows 7 but i dont like it. Is there a way i can add my Windows Xp onto it? Or is there a way to recover the Windows 7? IT wont Show The Harddrive when i try to install windows xp 64bit. I tried to install it since i cant find windows 7 recover cds. but when i try to install windows xp it wont find my harddrive can someone help me PLEASE.

[Big_Dave]

Your XP disk is lacking sata drivers.  I am surprised it didn't BSOD on you.  There are two things you can do. 1. Enter the bios and change the hard drive controller to IDE mode. Or, build a new XP installation disk and merge (slipstream) in the sata drivers. This link will give you more information on how to build a new XP installation disk.  You might not be able to find all the XP 64 bit device drivers for your ENVY.

[teamcrunk]

So is my best bet is to keep windows 7 then. but i cant find my cds to recover my windows 7. I have windows 7 oem would that work and i have my cdkey still. or is there a way i can recover my windows 7 with jsut the recover harddirve part?

Also i erased my Hd with Dban and i cant find my envy sdcard anywhere ugh. But it didnt erase my recover HD.

Thanks for the info

[teamcrunk]

for some reason it wont find my Harddrive anymore when i even try to instal windows vista. ill have to go rebuy windows 7 now ugh

[teamcrunk]

nvm got it to work haha vista 64bit

[Volpster]

One of the problems is that there is NOT an option to run in IDE mode instead of AHCI on the HP Envy 15.  I've gone thru every option in the BIOS, even upgraded the BIOS to see if it would appear, and it does not show up in the BIOS.  This is a big problem, because I need to run wiper.exe to get TRIM running on my drive, and it does not.  I dont want to have to do this, but i may have to, which is to yank the drive out of the envy (which is very time consuming on this machine) and put it on my other laptop that has wiper running just fine, and wipe it on that other laptop.  Unfortunately this is a temporary fix, because I have always run wiper as a nightly job to keep the SSD drives clean and running in tip top performance.  I recently picked up 2 of the Crucial realSSD c300 256GB 6gb/s drives, and was shocked at how they killed my OCZ Vertex, Intel X-25, and Corsair P-Series. For those of you who are SSD fans and have been waiting for the next leap in advancement, the c300 is the next gen SSD and the performance (355mb/sec consistent) speaks for itself. 

Anyone who is considering an SSD, please make sure you're aware of wiper, what it does, and how to run it, because you will become very disappointed in SSD performance within a week.  Unlike spinning disks that are set it and forget it, SSD's are like whinning little 3 year olds who complain about everything until they get what they want  You'll eventually love to hate them.  However, with all that said, I've personally invested over $4,000 in SSD technology and I don't have a single spinning disk on any of my 6 notebooks in my household, so they are well worth every penny.  Just be aware of what you're in for before you drop $500 on a good drive.