HP Elite 8100 vs 8200

[CTB-TECH]

We have a fleet of HP 8100 Elite Base Model SFF PCs, and recently had need to order a couple dozen more desktops.  Can't get the HP 8100s anymore, so we got HP 8200s which are nearly identical.  Unfortunately for us, they are not identical enough. 

Our plan is to keep the 8200s nearby, and to repurpose our own 8100s for use in the field, and we'd like to be able to swap the HDDs between these two model PCs to accomplish this.  Should be simple enough.

Except it doesn't work.  Any time we take an existing HDD from a working HP 8100 and put it into an HP 8200, the device bricks during boot just when the Windows logo animation begins.  Can't even boot the device into Safe Mode this way - it fails when it reaches PNP.

Have tried putting the 8100 HDD back into an 8100 and installing 8200 device drivers etc but no help so far.  What could be so different between these two units that prevents us from being able to do this?

As an additional puzzler, we use SCCM to image our pc's, and when I image an HP 8200 PC using the exact same HP 8100 image, it works perfectly - the only thing I have to do following the image completion is to manually change the display resolution.  Otherwise it works as expected. 

This would not be a problem if we weren't trying our best to avoid having to reload all of our Tech programs and so forth - we'd much prefer to move our existing hdd's into the new pc's with as little fuss as possible. 

Suggestions? 

Thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

There would be a different SATA AHCI controller in the 8100 and 8200. 

The 8100 has one of the Intel series 5 SATA AHCI controllers below (you can check yours to see which one under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section of the device manager).

Intel(R) 5 Series 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller

Intel(R) 5 Series 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller

Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series SATA AHCI Controller

...and the 8200 has the Intel(R) Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller for the series 6 chipset.

So there is no way you will get an 8100 hard drive to just boot in an 8200, or visa versa.

You will need to install the correct AHCI driver as applicable.

Then you may be able to do what you want.

Your SCCM image probably has more than just the one SATA AHCI driver, which is why it is working,

Paul.

[CTB-TECH]

Thanks, Paul.  Appreciate the detailed information.  I'll give that a shot and update here when I can.

BTW, the imaged 8200 hdd works just fine in an 8100, oddly enough. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

You can find the drivers you need at the link below:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=21408&lang=eng&OSVersion=&DownloadTyp...

Paul

[CTB-TECH]

Unfortunately, I still haven't had any luck trying to move my hdd (from an HP 8100) into an HP 8200.  I've tried every available HP 8200 driver I can find including the driver pack that you pointed out, but none of it has made any difference. 

For the record, some of our HP 8100s came with a variety of HDDs; Samsung, Hitachi, and Seagate.  The HP 8200s we have came with Seagates.  For reasons I still can't fathom, I've actually had two HP 8100 Seagate HDDs move successfully into an HP 8200 and boot successfully - one had a fresh HP 8100 image on it, the other had been imaged about a month ago and had picked up some Windows Updates as well as MS office.  Again, this was taking an HP 8100 Seagate Drive and putting it unchanged into an HP 8200 which came with a Seagate drive.  The drives were different sizes, but otherwise, puzzlingly, these worked ok. 

However, none of my other HP 8100 drives have ever worked - Hitachi, Samsung, and even at least one other Seagate 8100 hdd failed.  I can't even get the failing drives to boot into safe mode.  This is frustrating. 

Assuming that the point in the boot process where the 4 colored dots swirl out of the darkness to form the WIN7 logo was set to provide some sort of troubleshooting help rather than just to look pretty, I can tell you that every time the pc bricks during boot, it's between the points where the 2nd (green) and 3rd dots appear.  Red appears, starts to move, green appears starts to move, brick.  Could this possibly be helpful in isolating the cause of the failure? 

Thanks again...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I can't be of much help except to tell you that I believe that is the point where Windows is looking for the SATA AHCI driver so it can complete the boot up process.

That is where it crashes on me when I test out changing the BIOS from AHCI to IDE for example.  When you do that and you have a certain drive controller driver loaded that is set for the applicable storage controller setting, it is at that point where it crashes and will keep boot looping to that point until you shut the PC down.

Paul

[CTB-TECH]

Ok, I'll keep trying.  When (if) I make the breakthrough, I'll post the results here. Thanks for the assistance!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Good luck!