XW9400 Windows 7Professional x64 Recovery Image

[Q42]

I have a later model XW9400 Workstation with a REV 5C motherboard.

Is there a Windows 7 Professional x64 recovery image available for this model?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The PC never came from HP for W7, so no W7 recovery kits would be available.

The only available xw9400 recovery kits you can find would be from this vendor.

HP/Hewlett Packard and Compaq Recovery CDs brought to you by Computer Surgeons - Archives for end of...

[SDH]

There is no free upgrade path from Vista or XP to W10, but you certainly can get a Microsoft "system builder" W7Pro 64-bit installer. There likely would be a successful install from that, or you might even get away with buying a W10Pro 64-bit installer from Microsoft via the net.

Thereafter you could likely upgrade a successful W7Pro64 install to W10Pro64 using some of the drivers from HP's xw9400's update site (some of the Vista 64-bit drivers worked fine for me on early experiments with getting W10Pro64 installed on the xw generation of HP workstations). You'd do that via the still functioning free W10Pro64 upgrade path. Thereafter you even might wish to use Paul's Rufus method to upgrade from W10 to W11... he has posted in the past here exactly how to do that using a specific version of Rufus, and that install can bypass the expected blocks to a W11 install. I have W11 working on contemporary xw6400/xw6600 to yours, so it can be done and runs quite well. It is a project, but worth trying.

I have used that company Paul linked to for older HP recovery disk purchases in the past and they have delivered as promised.

[DGroves]

it's also possible to  locate/use a "internet archive hp recovery image" of windows 7

the disk you need is OEM Part Number: 650434-163 DN1/DN2 Repair Disk.

this is a "generic" HP win 7 OEM install disk without any system specific customizations,

it usually  came with a seperate driver disk that matched whichever HP business system model you had when ordered from HP back in the win 7 era,  this disk is no longer available from HP so 3rd party sources are the only way to acquire it today

note that HP recovery images will only install/activate on HP systems,  they can not be activated on non HP systems

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The HP W7 OEM disk will not work because it will detect that the PC was only supported for Vista and older operating systems.

Thus, the installation will require activation.

I know this because I have two such HP W7 Pro 64-bit OEM disks and I tried using one on a HP dc7800 CMT which also never came with W7, and it needed activation.

So, I had to use my generic HP OEM Vista Business 64-bit DVD which worked fine, and I had an W7 Pro upgrade disk with a product key and upgraded the PC to W7 that way.

Then I upgraded it to W10 Pro, and now run W11 Pro on the PC.

Those type of OEM disks only came with HP business class notebooks, not the desktops, as far as I'm aware.

I have many sets of HP desktop recovery disk sets from the old d510's all the way up to the 8200 Elite and they had to be used as a set and could only be used on the PC's listed on the labels.

I have the standalone HP OS OEM disks for XP Pro 32-bit, Vista Business 32 and 64 bit and W7 Pro 64 bit.

They will work on any HP PC which would have supported that operating system.

For example:  I have an HP 8200 Elite CMT and even though it came with W7 Pro, the XP 32 bit and Vista 64 bit disks worked fine and didn't need activation because the PC had support for those operating systems.

[DGroves]

i have used this specific win 7 disk to install windows 7 on numerous HP models both desktop and laptops'

i can't comment on other versions of HP windows 7 install disks

as long as the systems bios is SLIC v1.0 (or higher) enabled, this OEM disk will install and  activate

this disk is not system specific, and as long as the HP bios and SLIC requirements are met it will install/activate 

this recovery disk i referenced was the default recovery disk supplied by HP for the  z800 workstations, and as i mentioned is only the windows OS disk, the z800 drivers came on a seperate driver disk

[DGroves]

and just a quick followup to my previous post,

HP's driver page for the xw9400 does indeed list windows 7 as a supported OS

see the link below and under the select your operating system note that Linux/XP/Vista/Windows 7 are listed 

it's possible that hp may never have offered the xw9400 with win 7 preinstalled, but they obviously did/do support win 7 on this system and i was incorrect with the SLIC version number vista used slic 2.0 and win 7 uses slic 2.1

as i recall you can use the "slic toolkit" program to see what slic revision your current bios has

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-xw9400-workstation/3211286