Purchased HP Elite 8300 MiniTower

[i386]

OK I understand now thanks for the help now that I got this updated it seems good. These systems seem to still be widely used. I don't know why HP don't offer drivers I still see these in Doctor's offices ETC. Also quite a few on eBay with Windows 10. They seem to be very solid.

Now I know how company's lock the USB ports so employee's cannot put flash drives in. HA HA now I know the secrete to unlock it but I am sure Company's also use a password on the BIOS. But once where I used work I booted a system to the BIOS when no-one was looking. I wasn't gonna mess with anything I was just curious.

This has kind of been a learning experience

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, these HP business class PC's seem to run forever.

HP came out with a support policy for their PC which stated in substance that any PC manufactured prior to August of 2013 would not get W10 driver support.

HP Products Tested with Windows 10 | HP® Customer Support

You will find that you won't need to install many W10 drivers for your PC.

After you update to W10, you can install the latest Windows 64 bit audio driver directly from Realtek, which has support for W10.

PC Audio Codecs > High Definition Audio Codecs Software - REALTEK

The only other driver you need will be this one...for the PCI serial port and PCI simple comms controller.

Intel(R) AMT LMS_SOL for AMT 8.xx

This package contains the Intel Active Management Technology (AMT), including the Active Client Manager Host Embedded Controller Interface (HECI) device driver, and the Intel Local Management Service (LMS) and Serial-over-LAN (SOL) support for the supported desktop models and operating systems.

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp67001-67500/sp67118.exe

[i386]

Yea I figured that a Policy just like Dell. But just because they are not "tested" does not mean it will not work. I am glad there are allot of people that are not even tech savvy they don't believe that "It will not work time to buy a new PC" 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're gonna really like your 8300 Elite CMT.

I still have my two 8200 Elites.  They both have the i7-2600 processor.

They run great.  I maxed out the memory to 32 GB, tossed in 240 GB SSD's, nVidia GT 1030 graphics cards...

They can pretty much still keep pace with my Dell Optiplex MT 7020 PC with the Intel i5-4590, the same SSD, the same GPU and 32 GB of memory.

The only reason I got the Dell was because I got it for free.  It just needed a drive and some memory, or my 8200 Elite would still be my primary PC.

I hope I can find a good home for them one day.

[i386]

I don't even want to go into Details about my experience with Dell. They actually canceled my Warranty I was paying monthly subscription. I told one tech in an email I did not want the Warranty after January. They canceled the Warranty for the rest of this month. And I had some ongoing issues I was trying to work out with someone from the corporate Office. Now that the Warranty was canceled my emails are getting ignored. But it is OK the problems with Dell is the Support Assist software  has issues. It was giving false alerts saying hardware was bad when it was good. But I guess I am better off the system runs good that that issue. It was just rude of them to cancel the Warranty early but it's OK. I see al lot of bad things posted on their community.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I guess it depends on your personal experiences.

You find a some bad press here too on HP business desktop PC's, and those disgruntled folks say they are buying a Dell.

I've never had an issue with either PC manufacturer, or their PC's, and the one 8200 Elite I bought new ran flawlessly during its 3 year warranty period, and continues to run like a champ 9.5 years later.

All the Dells I have owned I bought off lease, and the warranties were expired, so I have no experience with their warranty service.

I prefer the HP Elite desktop PC series over the Dell Optiplex PC's, but not by a whole lot.

I am happy with either model.

[i386]

I just found another NEW HP 8200 SFF Elite Desktop on eBay. What is up with these new old stock HP's? I guess company's buy them for extra backup and they never got used so they sell them.

NEW HP 8200 SFF Elite Desktop 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're probably right.

The company never got to putting them in service, and sold them to a recycler along with other PC's they wanted to get rid of.

I have no doubt that the link you posted is from a recycler. 

He has way too much feedback to be an individual seller of nothing but PC's and related equipment.

When I worked for the American Red Cross in St. Louis, there was a PC recycler we sold our old PC's to.

They would pay something like $50 each for working ones, and take the broken ones off our hands.

Then I would see some of their eBay listings selling the working ones for much more than they paid for them--at least triple.

[i386]

Yes I used to work at a retail store. I am not sure what they did with old work stations. I was just told when they were replaced to put them on the salvage trailer.

And we would get new systems they would trash the keyboards. I asked once if I could keep those and they said no to throw them away.

And right now I hear there is a shortage on Computers that is what the complaints are on Dell Community is orders being canceled. 

So I guess there is a demand for computers right now people will buy anything that will run Windows 8.1/10. That system I saw had 4 GB so I am assuming it is 32 bit. 

As far as mine I am a big fan of Windows 7 and I said earlier I may use 7 but it's not really safe and I am not a huge fan of Windows 10 I can tolerate it. I hung on to Windows 98 for like 2 years and moved to XP and now it seems I just cannot let go of Windows 7. I thought about buying a Windows 8.1 key and installing it but not sure I see support does end in 2023. Windows 8.1 seems to be more like Windows 7 with some of the Windows 10 Features. People say why bother with buying 8.1 with an older system. But if it's worth it to me then I guess that is what matters. I never really used Windows 8 or 8.1 I heard allot of people say they hated it like Vista. I hated Windows Vista and Hated Windows Millennium also. But Windows ME was the hardware I was using. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

When I first worked for the Red Cross, we had a 5 year contract with Dell.

Then HP got the corporate contract.

5 years later Dell got the contract again, but unlike HP who would ship us PC's as needed, Dell required the organization to buy them in bulk.

So in other words, if I needed a laptop for someone, I could order it through the HP contract, and get one laptop.

Dell would not sell us one laptop.  I don't know what changed over the years, because I seem to recall we could buy individual PC's from Dell back in the late '90's.

So they had to get out of that contract, and went back to HP.

The only Windows OS I didn't like was W8.

W8.1 is tolerable. There were some improvements that made W8.1 easier to use.

To me W10 is more like W7, and I have no problem with it--other than the 6 month build updates that have finally put a couple of my ancient HP notebooks to stay at version 1909.

W8.1 has no program listing from the windows icon on the lower left side of the taskbar like W2K, XP, Vista, W7 & W10.

The OS's I liked were W2K, XP and W7.  Vista was OK too.  I called W7, Vista that worked.

You could do some tweaks to Vista, and it ran decently.

'95, 98, were OK, but I had a knack of screwing them up, and no way to undo my mistakes as there was no system restore option.  But I did learn something from my mistakes.

I still have an unopened Windows ME disk and OEM key I never used.