HP Pavilion cleanup

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

We have an HP Pavilion 432 computer, bundled with Windows XP Home. I am
trying to squeeze a bit more performance out of it by doing a system- and
diskwide cleanup.

The computer only has 256 MB RAM, meaning that Windows has to resort to the
pagefile quite often. It has a 40 GB harddrive, which seems to be rather
slow. The C😛artition has (relatively) plenty of free space, and file
fragmentation is minimal. Still, the computer is often freezing or lagging
while performing extensive and time consuming disk access.

I have noted that this machine has been configured with two partitions: One
5 GB FAT32 partition called "HP_RECOVERY" mounted as D:, and one 32 GB NTFS
partition called "HP_PAVILION" mounted as C:. The D😛artition seems to
contain disaster recovery-data in case the main C😛artition fails or the
Windows installation is otherwise corrupted. Also, from how I understand the
bootup messages, the option to boot the D: recovery-drive may be hardcoded
into the BIOS somehow.

Now, to me it would make more sense to swap the position of the two
partitions: AFAIK hard drive access is faster for data placed on the
beginning of the disk. Thus it would be better to have the main system
placed at the beginning of the disk, rather than a partition that is rarely,
if ever, accessed. So I have the following questions:

- Would it be possible to juggle the two partitions so C: is placed before
D: physically on the drive, and still make the recovery option work?

- The D:-drive has almost 2 GB of free space. Can I safely shrink this
partition, and expand the C😛artition to fill the unused space, without
messing up the bootloader or anything else?

- The C: root contains two folders, hp and i386, with a total size of 1.25
GB. Can any of these be safely deleted? I would think all the contents of
c:\i386 are also represented on D:\i386, but I'm not sure about the
hp-folder.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, André Gulliksen <andre.gulliksen@start.no> wrote:
> We have an HP Pavilion 432 computer, bundled with Windows XP Home. I am
> trying to squeeze a bit more performance out of it by doing a system- and
> diskwide cleanup.
>
> The computer only has 256 MB RAM, meaning that Windows has to resort to the
> pagefile quite often. It has a 40 GB harddrive, which seems to be rather
> slow. The C😛artition has (relatively) plenty of free space, and file
> fragmentation is minimal. Still, the computer is often freezing or lagging
> while performing extensive and time consuming disk access.
>
> I have noted that this machine has been configured with two partitions: One
> 5 GB FAT32 partition called "HP_RECOVERY" mounted as D:, and one 32 GB NTFS
> partition called "HP_PAVILION" mounted as C:. The D😛artition seems to
> contain disaster recovery-data in case the main C😛artition fails or the
> Windows installation is otherwise corrupted. Also, from how I understand the
> bootup messages, the option to boot the D: recovery-drive may be hardcoded
> into the BIOS somehow.
>
> Now, to me it would make more sense to swap the position of the two
> partitions: AFAIK hard drive access is faster for data placed on the
> beginning of the disk. Thus it would be better to have the main system
> placed at the beginning of the disk, rather than a partition that is rarely,
> if ever, accessed. So I have the following questions:
>
> - Would it be possible to juggle the two partitions so C: is placed before
> D: physically on the drive, and still make the recovery option work?

I do not know how BIOS knows which partition to boot for recovery, but it
might only boot the first partition, which might be a problem if that is a
crashed Win partition.

I doubt if that would make any noticeable speed difference anyway. Make
sure that you have made the Recovery Tools CD and Recovery CD's (or DVD),
before tampering with partitions. Otherwise you may end up with no OS and
no recovery.

More RAM would likely help, especially if you have integrated video. A
co-worker's new Compaq w/256 MB and integrated video was sluggish, so I
added extra RAM to it. Just booting, with nothing running except system
tray items, it is using 309 MB, which is more RAM than it originally had.
Although, the more RAM you have, the more Windows loads into it during
boot.

> - The D:-drive has almost 2 GB of free space. Can I safely shrink this
> partition, and expand the C😛artition to fill the unused space, without
> messing up the bootloader or anything else?

I have shrunken a Windows partition to make room for another partition,
but have not tried moving the beginning of a partition. I would certainly
suggest having everything backed up and recovery CD's before attempting
that. A power glitch in the middle could disrupt it.

> - The C: root contains two folders, hp and i386, with a total size of 1.25
> GB. Can any of these be safely deleted? I would think all the contents of
> c:\i386 are also represented on D:\i386, but I'm not sure about the
> hp-folder.

I don't have a C:\i386 (maybe because I already made recovery CD/DVD), but
D:\i386 warns not to tamper with itself because it contains recovery info.
C:\hp appears to contain HP tools and HP loaded programs you might not
have installed or configured yet.

--
David Efflandt - All spam ignored http://www.de-srv.com/
http://www.autox.chicago.il.us/ http://www.berniesfloral.net/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

David Efflandt wrote:
> I do not know how BIOS knows which partition to boot for recovery,
> but it might only boot the first partition, which might be a problem
> if that is a crashed Win partition.

The Windows partition in this case is actually the _second_ partition. The
first partition is the recovery partition. The second partition boots by
default. To boot the first partition I need to press a key (F10 I believe,
but I am not quite sure ATM) when the computer boots and the HP logo is
displayed. I have actually tested this once: When pressing the appropriate
key during the HP logo I get kicked into a Windows NT-style bootloader,
which gives me one single option. Booting that starts the recovery process.

> Make sure that you have made the Recovery Tools CD and Recovery CD's
> (or DVD), before tampering with partitions. Otherwise you may end up
> with no OS and no recovery.

Of course.