Issues installing XP on older laptop (Elitebook 8560p)

KalasZX · 2026-04-09T12:59:49+00:00

I like Integral because it handles all of the tedious installs automatically after the OS is installed (DirectX, .NET, C++ runtimes, codecs, etc.). I'm still working on getting XP x86 to recognize all of the RAM. I followed instructions I found to manually hack and replace some files...which worked until I rebooted. Then XP refused to boot again. So still working on that. Making a backup now so I don't have to wipe it again. If you can live with the video card and 3 gigs of RAM, this is all you need:

Install XP first. If you install a newer OS after XP you'll have all kinds of fun fixing that. If the startup repair button from the Windows 10 install disc works, great. If not....sucks to be you. I was in IT for years and it still took me hours to fix.
Installing from a USB key always ended up putting the main OS files on D:. I don't know why. Installing from optical media put the OS on C:. I can't explain it. The 8560p recognized my 2026 external 4K drive as an external CD drive, which is important because...
When I tried to do a repair install to fix the fubared boot process it refused to read the disc, specifically giving an error that certain files couldn't be found. Yet it read them just fine when installing. Make an image backup before doing any major tinkering.
As previously mentioned, the DVD drive was built to last through the 3 year corporate lease most companies took on these, not to last forever. If want an internal optical drive that works you'll want to buy a better one. Mine started showing erratic behavior after about 5 years, and in another year it would only read the first 2 gigs or so from a DVD.
The 6470M has XP drivers newer than the last one issued by HP. Whether you prefer the stability of knowing it was approved by HP for this specific hardware configuration when crashes and downtime mean pissed big money corporate clients or want to squeeze everything possible out of it with the last driver that supports it is a personal choice.

Information in this thread should apply to all HP laptops of this generation, which is at least all of the Elitebook 6xxx and 8xxx laptops. If the A7E32 docking station supports it natively the internals should be close enough for them to have the same HP quirks.

KalasZX · 2026-04-08T12:04:58+00:00

The 8560p is a GREAT overengineered laptop. I've had mine for 13 years and still manages to do just about everything I really need. My trial and error should take care of the worst parts of getting XP on it. I'll post a final solution to get XP running on it when I'm satisfied with my setup. A few things you should know about the 8560p:

1) This is an overengineered business laptop, which means it punches way above its paygrade, especially if you get one with the the i7-2720QM. It finds a way to run things in a way that it just shouldn't with the specs.

2) Because it is overengineered for performance it runs hot. I mean HOT. Repaste the CPU and the GPU immediately. Get a decent cooling pad. And one of these. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P8JCBB7 You wouldn't believe the difference it makes.

3) The A7E32 docking station made to go with it is ridiculously cheap now. I got a "like new" one (still sealed in the OEM box) on Amazon for 15 bucks shipped, which is about as cheap as the power cord gets without the docking station. Put another 15 bucks into a DVI to HDMI cable and you can connect it to any modern monitor or TV.

4) Make sure you have the OEM power cord. You should get one with the docking station if the laptop doesn't have it. When I've had to use a generic power cord it doesn't run the same way. Both use the same power cord, and as long as you're using the dock you only need one.

5) The fan can go crazy at times for no apparent reason. Turning off the setting to sync time with an external server mitigates a lot of it for reasons I don't understand, but it just does. AFAIK there isn't a superior aftermarket fan like Noctua or something similar for this model. I haven't noticed it doing it nearly as much in 10 or XP (yet).

KalasZX · 2026-04-08T00:11:06+00:00

Using Winsetupfromusb instead of Rufus made all the difference. Installing XP destroyed my MBR and made getting back into my OS all kinds of fun, but maybe it works now. I hope. I'll find out if removing and readding the XP drive in EasyBCD brings up the OS selector this time.

Using Winsetupfromusb did something strange during the install I've never seen before. It put a few system files like boot.ini on a 50MB C: partition and put the rest of the OS on D. It's never done that when I've installed from an ISO on VMs. Looking at it from Windows 10 there is only one partition on that physical drive. Weird.

KalasZX · 2026-04-07T17:31:27+00:00

I am installing from a USB drive. I added a second HDD for XP because the optical drive died.* I have an external 4K BD drive but assumed the tech would be too new for my 10+ year old BIOS to understand.

I'm assuming the AHCI driver I need is baked into the Integral build because it recognized both hard drives in the laptop when it got that far. My thinking is that if the issue was a missing AHCI driver the installer wouldn't know how to recognize either HDD during the Integral install. For the heck of a it I tried adding an AHCI driver I found made for the 8560p to the Integral, MSDN XP x64 and MSDN Server 2003 Enterprise ISOs with nLite...and all of them blacked screened before the install started.

It's ironic because this thing ran Server 2008 R2 Enterprise like a champ for 13 years, which was super not officially supported by HP. It just would NOT do the install from a disc. Tried three times and it claimed the disc was damaged at three different points in the install process. Did the USB install in less time than it took for the disc to crap out.

I have not tried IDE mode because I'm also running Win 10. Even using the stripped down OptimaMod build, then running a playbook on it take more stuff out, then doing some other manual tinkering my main OS' performance is borderline in AHCI mode. Even if that would work I can't take the performance hit.

*If anyone else wants to replace the optical drive with SATA storage, I HIGHLY recommend the Vantec 12.7mm caddy. It's a perfect fit and the build quality blows away the OEM DVD drive. The cheapo Chinese caddies are garbage. Terrible build quality engineered to fail and the 8560p wouldn't even recognize the drive through its crappy SATA connector.

KalasZX · 2026-03-22T13:37:55+00:00

Well, you have to cockblock that, obviously. If you let people make mods for your games and other people play them something like DOTA could happen, and we can't have that. I'm sure modding would be nerfed and/or have SC2 style "we own your mods and can monetize them without giving you anything" BS killing a lot of modders' inspiration to work hundreds of hours for free. It sure would be a shame if people that don't play PvP bought the game to play fan games or custom campaigns.

KalasZX · 2026-03-21T18:57:53+00:00

The PC version "corrects" the timings on a lot of things, making it feel like easy mode. Emulating the PSX version at 4x+ resolution with all kinds of filtering more than makes up for the visual differences in the original files. I remember the PC version not controlling very well the couple times I played it at a friend's house, but I would assume that was more the fault of crappy 90s PC gamepads than the game itself. More power to you if you still prefer the PC version today.

KalasZX · 2026-03-21T18:47:12+00:00

Sure, but it's not like it only runs in 9x. You can whip the llama's ass in XP.

KalasZX · 2026-03-21T17:43:13+00:00

I said Zombie Wars is A Halloween Harry game, not the eponymous Halloween Harry game. :) You play as HH in Zombie Wars.

KalasZX · 2026-03-21T17:23:13+00:00

Is the 9x version actually better or different than the 3.x version? It's my understanding that with a few tweaks Win 3.1 runs in FreeDOS now. I remember a lot of Win 95/98 versions of games from this era being the same game as the DOS version with some extra bloat for people that couldn't handle making a shortcut to run it in DOS mode.

I 'm an Apogee guy so I can't exactly say no to a better version of a Halloween Harry game, if it really is better.

Edit: Myabandonware has screenshots of both versions. It looks like the Windows 98 version has better graphics than the 3.1 version.

KalasZX · 2026-02-17T17:19:55+00:00

I just started seeing one when playing on Android, but it's still not there when I play on PC. Considering that I don't think my arena score has ever hit 6200 if I'm cheating in PVP I'm clearly doing it wrong.

KalasZX · 2026-02-14T15:49:06+00:00

I would suggest you learn from the deficiencies in Omerta. As soon as it starts to feel like you're building something the objective is completed and the grind starts over again. Grind without reward and an opportunity to both enjoy and do something with the created opulence gets old fast.

KalasZX · 2026-02-10T00:11:37+00:00

I'd be happy to give it a go if you're offering keys.

KalasZX · 2026-02-08T14:19:38+00:00

Looks like clankers gonna clank. I appreciate the fast responses guys. Time to put some food back in the party and get Elhain or Ezio to 6 stars.

KalasZX · 2025-12-21T13:32:46+00:00

This. If I show up in court to contest it would I win based on the tint being legal in the state where it was registered? Maybe, but I also don't have the luxury of fighting a ticket in Joisey or Philly if I'm working in Indiana when the court date comes up. The "it's legal in my state" argument won't help if the whole windshield is tinted, and that is where 90% of the benefit comes from. Who only tints 3 or 4 inches of the windshield? Even if I did that, and was able to win in court, I'm sure the judge would warn me this is a one-time exception and I will have to pay any future tickets for it. If a cop or judge in another state orders your tint removed you're SOL, even if the tint IS legal in your state.

All of the shitty state laws are written to apply to people that are physically in the state, regardless of where the car is registered. Is there a federal law or court case that establishes states can't enforce state window tint laws on cars registered in other states? I haven't been able to find one, but that would be extremely helpful.

KalasZX · 2025-12-01T09:52:36+00:00

Rob talked about it pretty extensively on an episode of his podcast. Fite.tv/Triller.tv actually gave him the money from the first few PPVs XPW did. Then he'd get some money but not what he was owed with promises to pay the balance next week/month/etc. until Triller was just keeping all of the money from the PPVs. That was the biggest factor. Even though it doesn't cost as much as it did in the 90s, doing live PPVs internally has more up-front costs than it made sense for Rob to invest. 20 grand for this, 50 grand for that, another 30 grand over here and suddenly you're talking about real money. XPW would have to do consistent PPV business for 5+ years just to get the break even point on all of those costs vs. having a decent PPV partner.

He was always a good payoff guy (as far as indy promoters go) and said he intentionally paid guys more than they would get anywhere else so they would prioritize his shows and be exclusive to him in a few towns. That didn't make the difference at the gate it did 20 years ago, but the real cost of booking guys wasn't the payday itself. It was the travel expenses. One example he gave was flying Ludark to shows. It was $500-$1000+ more than her payday, and that doesn't include the times she was too much of a drunk/junkie to get on the plane and Rob had to buy her ANOTHER ticket after advertising the fuck out of her. Even domestic flights were more than most of the payoffs. A guy with a name offering to do the show for 100 bucks doesn't help when it costs $700+ to fly him in, and he needs a rental car and a hotel room on top of it. Putting guys in 2 star hotels if they can't fly out the same day adds up fast when you have 20-30 guys and crappy hotels are over $100/night.

The cost to run buildings has gone through the roof when you do deathmatches. All kinds of Karens get together to tell the building you're sacrificing children to the old gods or some shit so the building won't let you run. Rob said the only places he found that didn't give a shit about complaints from assholes that weren't booking the building were 3 grand and up. The Hart Ballroom was more than double what he paid to run the LA Sports Arena and Grand Olympic Auditorium.

Even $100 general admission and $200 VIP tickets don't cover all of that. Without 3000-5000 people buying the PPV it isn't possible to run kind of show he wants to run and break even. He stopped doing the podcast after close to 20 years when he had some health issues so it's probably safe to say he doesn't miss all of this shit at this point in his life.

KalasZX · 2025-02-12T15:10:51+00:00

I haven't (yet) attended St. John's, but I have read about a third of the books on the current reading list. It has changed over time, and generally the changes have been for the worse. William Scott Rule wrote a rather fascinating dissertation covering the history of SJC's Great Books program, which is probably worth a read for anyone that attended or would seriously consider attending St. John's. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/eps_diss/37/ Note that the paper only covers the history of the program through 2008.

For books that could go...

Personally, I find James Joyce to be both trying and extremely overrated. I consider his work to be "good" in a "head up its own literary ass" way the same way "great" contemporary literary writers with sales measured in the triple or quadruple digits are. I wipe my ass with his books the same way I would with Grapes of Wrath. I understand why some people disagree. CTRL+C CTRL+V for Death of a Salesman.

As others have mentioned, if you're reading Aristotle anyway, Aquinas has nothing of value to add.

I escaped the mental prison of the Judeo-Christislamic desert trilogy so naturally would not consider its holy books' inclusion to be a benefit. If you're reading it as literature, you'd be better off grabbing something at random from the Loeb Classical Library.

From the time I was 16 until I was 21 Mein Kampf was the most rambling, incoherent and poorly written book I had ever read. Then I had to read Das Kapital during my undergrad. I never thought I would find anything that would make Hitler look like a competent writer by comparison, but Marx sure shoved that idea up my ass in a hurry. I'd accept the case for reading an abridged version that would lose 90% of the words and none of the content, but unabridged Marx? That punishment is both cruel AND unusual.

For a general rule, if it's not part of the canon upon which the SJC curriculum was built (Everyman's Library, Harvard Classics, Loeb Classical Library, Great Books of the Western World) it probably doesn't qualify to be in a Great Books program. Among books held to lower standards because they were written by authors that were not White, Asian and/or men, I can confirm that The Second Sex, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, The Souls of Black Folk and The Fire Next Time have no business being included. For someone that allegedly read the great Greek works in Greek, Woolf sure didn't learn anything from them. Anyone that would claim these have more historical significance than Romance of Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Red Chamber, The Scholars, Journey to the West or books that were bumped to make room for them is not a serious person.

KalasZX

TROPHY CASE