the easy way to install memory on a Pavilion

[tking]

This thing is an HP Pavilion 4550z - one of the mini-atx towers that HP built a few years back.

It's **** crowded in there. The memory is buried behind the cdrom/floppy scaffolding.

Does anyone know of an easy way to get into this thing to upgrade the memory - it's got 64 megs of ram and I have a spare 128 sdram that would fit in the extra slot.

Any advice short of taking the whole thing to pieces (HP couldn't be that stupid could they?) would be appreciated.

[Midknyte]

if I remember right that's the short model with 1 cd drive.

you have to take off the cover, then take off 2 back screws and 2 right side screws (the right side if you are looking at the front of the computer) to open the motherboard back panel.

[Sterling_Aug]

MidK sounds about right on that. You should be able to take off the right side and the guts come out on and metal mounting plate.


Steo by step instructions:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...cname=bph03886

[tking]

Thanks people. Got it done and it was easy. The thing hinges open so you can get at the memory, once all those screws you mentioned are removed.

Problem #2: where do you find drivers for this dang thing? i've been everywhere - I downloaded drivers from accton.com who looks like they made the lan card, but they aren't playing nice at all. I'm thinking of installing w2k on it instead of 98se now, would 2k have all the drivers in it? Trying to find 98 drivers online now is mostly an archealogical exercise (time consuming and ultimately frustrating).

[Sterling_Aug]

Drivers for Win98 and Win2K seem to be like hens teeth.

The HP website doesn't really list any drivers for that model.

[Midknyte]

look up the drivers by the manufacturer like Intel, not from HP's site.

use unknown device identifier to make sure you downloaded the right driver.
Tech Tools

[tking]

... which would lead you to ask the question, "why buy an HP computer if they provide NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER for drivers and such?"

I am baffled as to why anyone would buy one of these things. They're cranky, evolutionary dead ends designed to be as dumb as they possibly can be.

[Midknyte]

They come with "restore" cds, which have all the drivers on them already. You shouldn't have to download any drivers if you use the original factory setup.

Support for future OSes is never guaranteed. That's just the way it is.

[tking]

No worries. I installed w2k on it, everything worked perfectly, no problems. Apparently the OS it was 'designed for' doesn't want to work, but one of the future OSes does. All drivers were included, no extra work required.

I give it 6 months on the outside. Partitioning and formating 5 year old hard drives tends to make them fragile. She'll be back, that machine is a nightmare.