Motherboard P5LP-LE in HP and Compaq

In past I was big supporter of HP products, especially computer systems. But in last year I lost my trust in their products. Firstly, my home workstation from HP started to malfunction. It was high class product - i7 920 with 1TB HDD and 8 GBs of RAM. It was really nice computer which offered a lot of bang for a buck. Unfortunatelly I write in a past tense - one day I started to get BSODs in Win7. After some further research I found that is known problem with i7 processors. A lot of users managed to solve such errors with settings of voltage for processor. But HPs motherboard did not have such options in BIOS. Also, it was just little bit out of warranty, so no luck for me. To make story short - I threw that junk into a dumpster and got myself proper components and built my machine from scratch. And I intend to do that in afuture, becouse of things like that.
Anyway, back to newest findings, that some other might benefit. P5LP-LE motherboard. I know it is old machine, but at work I have Compaq machine that has this MOBO built into. Lately I was working on some processor intensive software and I got green light to upgrade computer as much as possible. Surely, I quickly found web page with listed specifications for this M/B.
Processor upgrade information state:
Core 2 Duo E6x00
Core 2 Duo E4x00
Pentium D 9x0 Dual Core
Pentium D 8xx Dual Core
Pentium 4 6x1 series
Celeron D 3xx series
So, I simply checked on-line stores and surely quickly found http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifE6700 processor.
I was thrilled, since it is 3.2 GHz processor vs current E4300 1.8 GHz processor. I was eagerly waiting delivery of CPU and as soon as time ermited I built new CPU in a machine. I connected all together and ... NOTHING. Black screen, vents were spinning, thats all. Ok, I figured I should update BIOS to get support for a new CPU. After searching I found my Compaq computer on HP support page. After I choose my OS (Win XP) I did not get any BIOS upgrade to download. I remembered that computer came with preset vista OS, so I choose this one, and sure enough there was BIOS update available. I downloaded exe file and use RAR to extract its content to a folder. There was *.ROM file that is actual BIOS code and program Winflash. With Winflash I simply updated BIOS from my WinXP OS, which is not supported?
Anyway, everything went smoothly and I again built my new CPU in a machine. But still, computer was not working.
So, back to research and internet forums...
And, conclusion is - Intel made two E6700s processors. The one, that would function with P5LP-LE M/B has 4MB cach, 2,66 GHz and was introduced in 2006. It was made in 65nm technology and has code name Conroe. The one I got was introduced in 2008, is made in 45nm and has code name Wolfdale.
So, if only HP would state on its support site, that processor must be Conroe, or if Intel would employ person to think of new model names...
Well, I would not loose my precious time over nothing and you would not read this...

Setting Raid on HP Pavilion a6115 Desktop PC win XP

Recently friend of mine purchased computer HP Pavilion a6115. This was his enter into dual core processing world, since his last machine was quiet old. He also decided to use 2 500 GB HDD in RAID 1 array.



He got nice and shiny hp box. He soon realized, that Vista OS is just not what he hoped for, so he opted for more familiar and faster Windows XP System. It turned out, that HP does not support XP out of the box, so we had to do it other way. Even Motherboard mentioned as Asus P5LP-LE was not found on Asus web page.
So few trials and errors were needed to sucessfully set RAID and install Win XP.
Well let's start from beginning...

Strangely, but that's how things work even today, for setting windows on RAID array you should use Floppy with dedicated drivers.
Pavilion does not have such drive, which is not surprising... Second thing as mentioned before, XP drivers are not directly available from HP support pages.

But, after going trough computer specification: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01080268&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3463943, it is clear that you need to use Intel drivers for Onboard RAID controller: ICH7-DH - 945G chipset. In order to install win xp to RAID array, you have to get 32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility for Intel® Matrix Storage Manager. Download available here This program from Intel creates floppy with drivers to install during win xp installation (F6 option). But since there is no floppy available, I will show you little trick...
First of all you need software that will emulate floppy drive: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#download
After running and setting this program, you should see Floppy drive icon in Windows XP under My Computer.
When "floppy drive" is available, run Intel floppy configuration utility. It will automatically create all files etc.
After this is done, next step is to add these drivers into installation CD for WIn XP. (Remember, we don't have Floppy drive nor Floppy available :-)
One of the easiest ways to add drivers to installation disc is to use program nLite. http://www.nliteos.com/
This is very powerful tool to manage WinXP installation cd - you can add various data, remove unnecessary software etc.
To proceed, Win XP installation disc is needed. Please check http://www.nliteos.com/ for detailed information how to integrate drivers into installation. When finished, you must create new Bootable ISO image and burn it on blank CD-R.
You can now install windows XP on Pavillion a6115 with RAID enabled.

All software used is freely available from WWW, except Win XP.

Good luck!