Goldfish Bowl

HP nc6320 SATA Driver for Windows setup

This is a bugger.

I have a HP Compaq nc6320 business notebook, and I want to install Windows XP on it. However, I don’t have the original disk, and I have formatted it since (with Linux the day I got it). I’m having to jump through a bunch of hoops.

First of all, go to the HP website and download the SATA driver floppy disk image. You can find it nestled amongst the storage drivers just here Once you’ve got that, run the installer. It’ll pop a self extracting EXE in C:\swsetup\SP32478

What HP neglect to mention is that the HP nc6320 doesn’t actually have a floppy drive, and so providing a floppy writing extractor is pretty pointless.

First we need to extract the image. You can do this using WinRAR. Simply right click the EXE, then click Open in Winrar (or open in Winrar manually). Extract the file temp.IMA to the same directory as the archive.

Now we download another utility, called WinImage extractor. It’s free, don’t worry. You’ll get a zip file, open it up, copy the contents of the folder to C:\swsetup\SP32478.

Now click Start->run, type cmd. then type cd C:\swsetup\SP32478.

Type

extract.exe -x temp.IMA

The folder should now be full of the contents of the floppy. Hurrah! Here comes the tricky part. We’re going to slipstream the driver into an XP disk.

From here, you could use the TXTSETUP.OEM file to intergrate the drivers. However, I’m lazy and I don’t want to have to worry about the syntax of the TXTSETUP.SIF file. So, I downloaded nLite and went through the process of customising a Windows XP install. First I extracted the files from a current XP disc. Then I followed the setup through and checked add drivers. Also check Bootable ISO (IMPORTANT!)

Then click next. You should be given a screen with a listbox. You now need to click Insert, Single Driver. Navigate to c:\swsetup\SP32478. Select IASTOR.inf.

You’ll then get a box which asks you to select which textmode drivers you want to install. Select all of them, then click OK. Click next a few times.

Once you’ve got to the end you’ll be asked whether you want to make an ISO or burn direct. I recommend making an ISO image and burning it with ImgBurn.

Once you’ve done this, congratulations! You’ve just made an XP setup CD which will work on a HP nc6320! A bit of a faff, I agree, but it works!