HP Pavilion Slimline PC - Where do I start with this??

Just when I thought it would be an easy video this week - getting this PC recovered, think again! In this video we will go over this SFF Slimline PC to see what surprises lurk in the shadows, clone the HDD, complete some upgrades and perform a full recovery!! But wait... I can only make 1 set of recovery DVD's???
#hp #retro #retropc #windows #vista #pavilion #amd #kingston #deskstar #hitachi #slimline #sff #computer #computerrepair #restoration #recovery
Link to Motherboard:
theretroweb.co...

[@CC8771]

This case contains my current *modern* PC lol. Upgraded the front USB ports to USB 3.1. 12700k, RTX 4060 LP, 32gb DDR4, 1+2+1+2+4TBs of SSDs and a LG blue ray drive. GOAT low profile case IMO, built it all off sniping ebay deals.

[@zeroturn7091]

What cooler are you using?

[@_Jadewolf_]

Oh wow, nice sleeper build! Doesn't it run hot with that small of a case? Or is the copious amount of ventilation holes enough? And how did you get a power supply so small to power the new motherboard?

[@0MeALot0]

Nice idea but the temps must be horrible right? Or are you leaving the top off? Or undervolted cpu?

[@CC8771]

@@zeroturn7091 Scythe Big Shuriken 3.

[@CC8771]

@@_Jadewolf_ It doesn't run too hot. While idle it's around ~15W and ~200W while gaming. Got two 40mmx10mm fans as exhaust in the rear ventilation holes and the SparklePower PSU is a 400W that also acts as exhaust. Lots of old secondhand server style flex atxs are for sale on ebay.

[@phanthanhlaptop]

Wow, this video was such a blast from the past! The detail you put into showcasing and restoring the HP Pavilion Slimline is incredible. It’s amazing to see all the care and knowledge you bring to these vintage machines. Keep up the awesome work!

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

Yeah but hp has a ton load of issues with upgradability on a lot of there older models from locked down wifi cards to a sata cable no longer manufactured to my favorite the hard drive controller that doesn't work without a driver and that driver is locked to windows xp.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I really appreciate this thank you!! I'm glad you enjoyed!

[@TheRetroRecall]

I guess it all depended on the model. Not all HP systems were limited.

[@SGTMacBC]

Nice job showing the reset for making restore cd/dvds. Nothing spurs my OCD more. Having an older OS restored. Hardware without the drivers to make them work properly. One thing with older HP's with ASUS boards. You can go to ASUS and they will have drivers and bios updates.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I felt like it was important to show. I find it frustrating that an OEM would limit the end user from being able to make a recovery set of disks. Just blows my mind.

[@The_Magic_of_Zelda]

I am an IBM/Lenovo fan so I smiled when I saw your Lenovo T470s which is a beautiful workhorse of a laptop. I used to have a T460 laptop which was a great machine. I now have a ThinkPad L13 Yoga. ThinkPads forever! Once you do a recap, add in a budget, low profile GPU like the GeForce 610, 720, 1030, etc and you’ll have better performance as well as HDMI. With Linux, your slim HP is a great multimedia streaming PC for the living room or bedroom.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thinkpads are amazing machines, I have far too many to admit to lol! Yes - I'll keep my eye out for a low profile graphics card. I don't know why I have such a hard time finding them.

[@The_Magic_of_Zelda]

@@TheRetroRecall It is hard for to go to another PC brand laptop after owning a ThinkPad. :) Yeah the demand for low profile graphics cards has always been very low compared to full size cards since most consumers that tend to buy slim PCs don't really care about power and performance. Also slim desktops usually come with lower wattage power supplies which are not always ideal for even low power, budget friendly cards compared to their full sized tower counterparts. Not to mention the full size desktops have superior cooling than slimline desktops. You are more than likely to find a GPU in a business class slim desktop but even those are still hard to find. I used to work for company that refurbishes donated desktops and majority of slimline desktops we got either never came with a graphics card or their graphic cards were removed before being donated since GPUs tend to have good resell value compared to other PC components.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I never thought to dig into the business class PC's to look for a dedicated graphics card. I have a few business class SFF systems I haven't checked out yet that (fingers crossed) may just have a card. Thanks again!

[@The_Magic_of_Zelda]

@@TheRetroRecall That another thing that makes working with old machines so much fun. You never know what is inside until you check. It's like opening a treasure chest, haha! 😂

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha yes!!! I say this all of the time, always a mystery! :)

[@bigpanda8847]

+The Retro Recall. Great video as always I always love watching a rebuild of a old school pc and I agree with you on the whole internet archive thing I really hope it's up and running soon as it's a reliable website for retro enthusiasts to archive much needed software and stuff.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thank you for this!!

[@justsumguy2u]

You have a functional Vista computer---awesome! What many don't understand is that Vista's notoriety is exactly what makes them collectable. I'm shocked that this one even made it to POST with all of those failing capacitors lol I've had 2 Slimlines, both with Win7. My current one also has the Athlon II, and it came from HP with 4 GB of memory. But here's something dissappointing---it is non-upgradeable, so 4 gigs is all it will ever have. I also have a Vista machine, and Vista will still go online....but it's painfully slow lol

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha indeed, and I'm equally surprised. I think I'm definitely running on borrowed time with these caps. That said, the video is done and the repairs will start!

[@spike5552]

Vista is a very beautiful os, i have a core i3-4160 with 8gb of ram i just need to find a small case and i will instal vista on it ❤ hope it works, just for fun and for the beautiful sounds that os has 😢.

[@phanthanhlaptop]

Wow, this video was such a blast from the past! The detail you put into showcasing and restoring the HP Pavilion Slimline is incredible. It’s amazing to see all the care and knowledge you bring to these vintage machines. Keep up the awesome work

[@brady_w904]

i have a fully working xps 630 on vista with all its original vista era specs. it’s probably like 10 times faster than the slimlines though

[@TheRetroRecall]

I always enjoyed and never had an issue with Vista (or ME for that matter lol)

[@rluker5344]

I used to have a very similar one. HP Slimline s3220n. Same motherboard. Had a Hauppage TV tuner/capture card. The Athlon 2 core really held it back.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice! Yeah the intel CPUs were definitely superior at that time IMO.

[@JustsomebodyWatchingurvids]

Great info on that recovery disks work around. Back-ups are a absolute must. Recovery and restore are nice but the best way to do it, if you have the money, is cloning. Macrium is extremely easy to use. Looks like IA is offline because of some nefarious DDOS attackers. It's good to know they're working to bring it back online. Until then we'll just have to wait. 😞

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed, I was lucky everything worked out. I really hope IA comes back online soon.

[@pierreinthavong181]

Cool retro PC video!😁

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thank you!

[@MaskedGEEK]

A Vista-era PC with SATA HDDs. I was kinda surprised at that, but then I looked up SATA. While it was introduced in 2000, the first SATA HDD was the Seagate Barracuda SATA V released in January 2003. This means the SATA interface is over 20 years old. Now I feel old.

[@alexg9155]

Almost all Vista systems were SATA. This also made it difficult to downgrade to XP, as XP had no SATA AHCI support and it would just BSOD. I made a crapton of money running a "I remove Vista, I install XP" side hustle because I knew how to slipstream drivers in the iso 😂

[@MaskedGEEK]

@@alexg9155 I didn't think SATA was mainstream by Vista days. And certainly not home built PCs. My PC back then had 4GB RAM, 60GB HDD, though I can't remember the CPU or GPU anymore though I can remember the CPU was a quad core, but I do know it was quite a powerhouse and could run games easily at 1,024 x 768 res in full true color 32bit mode without issue. It was only the first PC I built where the CD drive didn't have the analogue L-R audio cable that ran to the sound card which had me confused as to how CD audio would play without the cable, but surprised it ran through the IDE cable as if it were the old L-R cable. My HDD though was IDE. Running XP it flew, but Vista chugged. Not surprising given the services it ran at load on an old 7,200rpm platter IDE HDD. Later on I got a dual core laptop that also ran XP by default. It also only had 2GB RAM running off of a 5,400rpm IDE HDD. When Win7 came round I remember doing a test by putting W7 on the laptop, then tested the laptop and my PC's boot time. Despite having less physical resources, the laptop got to the desktop quicker than my gaming PC still running Vista. While I know now that W7 only started services as they were needed unlike Vista's "Imma load ev'rything lolz" approach to starting services, I didn't know back then and was shocked the laptop booted first. But yeah my Vista PC ran on an IDE HDD. That was my last IDE HDD PC though. My next was all SATA.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha so true.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Lol

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for sharing this with us! I do recall having both IDE and SATA Vista systems so I guess it wasn't a shock for me. The nice thing about the SATA in this system is that we can continue to upgrade it to a newer OS if we wanted.

[@christophercompton2739]

Most HP systems from that time has a restore partition. You can Clone it with Ghost to a new drive and reboot to system restore. I've done this procedure hundreds of times. Once you get into windows you can then create your own restore discs.

[@TheRetroRecall]

After a restore - yup! Just happy I was able to recreate a set and that the original HDD was in tact.

[@williamjones4483]

I too have a number of Light Scribe optical drives and an adequate supply of discs. I bought a new Dell XPS 8300 in the latter part of 2011 and one of the first things I did was to make factory recovery Light Scribe discs for that PC. Labeled them with a Light Scribe burner and to this day they are perfectly readable. I can't figure out why for the life of me why HP abandoned that technology. And regarding the motherboard being manufactured by Pegatron, I had also mentioned that Asus is the parent company of Pegatron.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes you did, I couldn't recall! Nice to hear that you've had a good experience with lightscribe. I've never experienced it myself so I think it will be a fun video. I've heard mixed reviews of it however in either case - I just want to say I did it lol.

[@williamjones4483]

@@TheRetroRecall I think you'll find Light Scribe both enjoyable and useful. Since the discs are no longer being manufactured I have turned to eBay to get mine, however they ain't cheap. The average cost per disc seems to be about U.S. $2.00. Also they used to be available in four or five colors, but the only color I've been able to find is of a brownish color. One last thing, my past experiences with Windows Vista was quite dismal. Recently I had occasion to use the 64 bit version of Vista and wowzers! That experience what nearly the same as Windows 7. If only you could find some way to run Vista 64 bit....

[@artekmeister]

I have one of these Slimline PCs. I used a FENLINK adapter for the SSD because it has all the holes just like the HDD. I added a half-height GT 730 from Lenovo for display-ports and a half-height USB 3.0 adapter for better speed when needed. With 4 GB memory, I loaded Windows 10 okay. Also experimented with Linux okay. Computer has memory size limit of 4 GB. ;D

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for sharing this!

[@_Jadewolf_]

Nice video, thanks a lot! 😊👍🏻 To your point at 13:30... I think they kept one side screwed on to lessen the probability of vibrations. I have cases where onyl one side is fastened, and sometimes, the DVD drive rattles.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ahhhhh good call out!!!!

[@aisle9]

I have one of those PCs, and love it. Mostly because I swapped the guts out with an i7-8086k and an RTX A2000, but I do very much love it. It's been my HTPC of choice since the day I decided to see if I could make an i3-6100 and GTX 750 Ti work in there if I used a beefier Flex ATX PSU.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice!!! Yes, fortunately it's standard enough to swap out for newer hardware and make a bit of a sleeper if you wanted to!

[@colinreece3452]

I just picked one for £24 so going have a paly with it, thanks for the this video.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Awesome and no problem, glad you enjoyed!

[@CounterStriker013009]

I still have this PC, BTW you need to replace the new power supply with the screw to ham the lock of PC case inside. My slimline is trade with carousell(now don't have anymore I guess), I replace the CD drive as HDD encloser and replace more.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the info!

[@LatitudeSky]

Just picked up an HP ProDesk G3 i3 7100, which is about 8 inches by 8 by 2. 15cm by 15 by 5 maybe? The size of a personal frozen pizza. Or a pita bread. Apparently I am hungry. It's for my home office where I don't need horsepower as much as I need compact size. Yet it can run Windows 10 just fine. HP did a terrific job fitting everything into a tiny case. Very nice build quality. No expansion at all but it does support NVME m.2. It replaced an HP DV6 laptop and uses the same power brick. I hadn't planned for that but I love it when the OEMs just reuse parts across product lines.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I agree - and now you made me hungry 😂

[@Redmage913]

My grandfather in 1999-2000 had a Gateway WinME system. He screwed it up so many times they taught him how to use the system restore utility (Norton ghost based IIRC), so he would stop calling them :P

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha!!! Like so many others back then :)

[@kylestevenson9699]

Linux is great for these older Vista era PCs. I use one as file server and it works nicely(though it has 8GB DDR2 of ram so it doesn't have the same issues of other Vista era machines). Originally when I got it from my grandfather, the HDD was dead and the CPU's thermal paste needed to be replaced. After that it has worked well with Fedora LXDE or XFCE, or without GUI as a server.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice! Yes it's neat to see how Linux can bring some of this older hardware back to life.

[@TheRetroRecall]

It has its uses :)

[@BilisNegra]

48:10 Pegatron had Asus as its parent company and specialised in OEM motherboard manufacture (as in this case). It's an independent company since mid 2010.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the insight thank you!

[@chrisrudi7162]

Very detailed video, thank you for that. A few days ago there was an Acer Aspire XC-603 with an Intel Pentium J2900 processor on the street. I took the device with me and installed 8 GB. It's not a high-end device, but I want to use it to set up a Batocera Linux PC. Unfortunately, installing a dedicated graphics card is not possible with my model.

[@TheRetroRecall]

You're welcome, it was definitely a long one but I wanted to include as much detail as I could. Hey, at least you saved the machine, so that's a win.

[@tarajoe07]

That dock can clone without any software or even plugging to a computer. Just need the drives in the correct bays and hit the button.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I did not know that!

[@jameslewis2635]

I remember selling systems like this. Even then the modems were obsolete and generally caused more problems than they solved. The Intel competition for these Athlon X2 chips would have been from the Core 2 Duo line when Vista was current. I would swap out the modem for a low profile graphics card. The ones I have seen are the likes of the GeForce GT730 and Radeon HD5450. Neither of those would turn it into much of a gaming machine, but it would take a fair bit of stress off the CPU. I wouldn't read too much into the size of the CPU cooler, it is not one that would come off the shelf with this CPU - rather it is an HP design. Also Intel CPU coolers have always been so much junk that people looking to get the best out of their systems have always had to purchase after market coolers. The motherboard looks like an ASUS board because Pegatron originally were the part of ASUS that dealt with OEM motherboards and was spun off in 2007. They seem to have still been using the same text and colour schemes I have seen from earlier ASUS motherboards.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for this insight, I appreciate the info!

[@AJComputerServicesUK]

Nice Video Squire, I currently have a S5000 Slimline Pavilion as part of my Collection, Believe mine has an Intel CPU and has a Windows 7 Home Premium C.O.A Sticker on the side, Mine only has 1 X Card Reader Slot which can use SD, MMC & Sony Memory Stick Cards plus it has the Pocket Media Bay Drive Slot & I actually have a Pocket Drive which fits in the Slot too, I have upgraded both the Internal Hard Drive & the Drive in the Pocket Drive for SSD Drives which help with the Speed of the System, I think it came with Windows 10 & can’t remember if it still has the Images for the Windows 7 Recovery, I’ll have to check that out! Anthony - Birmingham/UK 🙂🇬🇧

[@TheRetroRecall]

That's awesome, thank you for sharing!!

[@BandanazX]

Your disk clone is probably leaving 160-192GB unallocated. I'd like to see a reinstall (verify that they actually work) from DVD on your SSD, which is probably 480-512GB instead of the factory 320GB. Then an analysis of the partition layout. The built in recovery partitions and features to enact that via a BIOS boot menu always seemed like sorcery to me.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I had actually detailed a section calling this exactly out in my original cut. The video was running way to long so for the point I was making, I cut it out. I always end up extending the partition to take advantage of the full space (which can always still be done). The SSD was 960gb, so a lot of available space. I won't do another video on the DVDs, however I will test them prior to uploading of course.

[@BandanazX]

@@TheRetroRecall Was the result of installing from DVDs onto a larger drive a larger C: partition? Was the DVD install 'smart enough' to use a larger drive or was it just a disk image that left a lot unallocated? Thanks for the response.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I have not done it just yet. Canadian Thanksgiving here at the moment, I'll check into this week :)

[@Theutmostgeek]

This case design was used for quite a long time iirc. There is one model which is more of a media center focused machine which had composite ports on the motherboard and coaxial like your machine has. Still a very neat machine nonetheless!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed.

[@simonlathwell]

I've got my Lenovo H30-00 slimline desktop system. It is basically a laptop motherboard built into a slimline desktop case with a BGA Intel Celeron Quad-Core J2900 2.41GHz, a single laptop 4GB DDR3 stick, 500GB HDD, and DVD-RW Drive. I brought it brand new in May 2015 for £200 (Canadian C$359.83) and it came with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, then I upgraded to Windows 10 in 2016 with the free Windows 10 upgrade. It done well lasting until April this year when Win 10 decided to nuke it's self and no longer booted, so I moved over to my Linux system that I built. The only things I can upgrade is the optical drive, RAM, and Hard Drive, and it does have a PCI-E X16 slot, and a Mini PCI Slot that only supports things such as WiFi or WiFi/Bluetooth cards. I'm gonna rebuild it, do a deep clean as I vape, and upgrade the HDD to an SSD, and then install a lighter version of Linux and get it setup as a Media System, and as a download system when am downloading large files overnight using torrents, like from the web archive when am downloading restore disks, and other older and retro software. Only downside is that can't install two SSD's unless remove the optical drive, so will be adding a 1TB portable HDD as my media drive, and a 500GB for all of my downloads. Hope you and your family are keeping well, and that your Mum is keeping well. As always another great video, and look forward to your next video.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I love when you share these builds. Always helps generate new ideas and also helps me remember some of my other builds. Mom us doing great now - thanks so much for asking!

[@simonlathwell]

@@TheRetroRecall Thank you for the kind comment :). I really enjoy sharing my builds with you. You are the only retro KZbinr I follow who actually takes time to reply to peoples comments. I'm glad that I'm helping you to come up with new ideas, and reminding you of your other builds. I hope by sharing my old and retro builds with you it will help with ideas for you for your old and retro builds, and for future video ideas.

[@TheRetroRecall]

100% I believe interaction and the sharing of ideas is very important! Keep that sharing going :)

[@spywarefinder]

What a fantastic video! Thanks for getting that uploaded, I’ve always wanted to see that particular computer being factory restored, best part is that now it’s available online! Quite surprised about the capacitors since the same model and main board I had was fine but more importantly… your HP computers works! If you did get strange problems later on it might be the Nvidia chipset but there might be other people that can help confirm if there was an actual defect with this particular build? Thanks again! :D

[@TheRetroRecall]

I'm glad you enjoyed and see - viewer requests do happen!! :). Stay tuned for part 2.

[@spywarefinder]

@@TheRetroRecall Awesome! Think I might have to buy one again :D

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha nice, then you can update me!

[@spywarefinder]

@@TheRetroRecall I found one on eBay that looks real good but it was sold… however there are a few more. Also, I did have an intel Pentium variant and I’m certain the fan was mounted top down rather than on the side compared to the AMD build. I can report the intel temperatures seemed low too, when idle on Windows :)

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

Take a look at the nVidia quadro cards. I have the P620 in my streaming computer: low profile, no extra power needed and single slot. Ideal for small form factor computers like this.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the recommendation! You can include your card in the Palm shipment :)

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

@@TheRetroRecall if I do that there will be no more streams... You're ok with that?

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hmmmm, that's one to think about. Are there streams now?? 😂😂😂

[@futurepastnow]

Pegatron is a spin-off of Asus. It was Asus' branch for making OEM products, which was spun off to its own company around 2010. A competitor of Foxconn, Compal, Quanta, etc. They probably made this entire computer (except for the drives and maybe power supply).

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ahhh makes sense, thank you for this!

[@schnitzelsamy]

Cool

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks!

[@PiercedJedi]

those media bay drives were such a great idea, unfortunately they were too proprietary to really catch on, had they shared the rights other manufacturers would have been able to make drives/bays for their computers and everyone would have gotten on board, it's like Zip disks or LS120 super drive disks, could have been way bigger had they not kept them under lock and key

[@TheRetroRecall]

I agree!!!!

[@gentuxable]

Look out for Radeon HD 7750, it is slightly too new for the system came out 2012 but was available as low profile, has good performance and drivers for XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I will, and thank you! I love the recommendations and in this case, a newer GPU wouldn't hurt.

[@stevencamp6824]

I am like that as well i have factory restore media for most of my machines (mostly Gateway)

[@TheRetroRecall]

Always good to have the option. Now to be honest, back in the day I would completely wipe the machine, install a fresh OS and drivers and move on as the bloat was too much for me. Now I enjoy exploring it haha.

[@stevencamp6824]

@@TheRetroRecall yeh..with the gateway discs those apps etc are on a seperate disc lol

[@TheRetroRecall]

True.

[@xBruceLee88x]

I have the same drive clone tool. Nifty device

[@TheRetroRecall]

100%!

[@xBruceLee88x]

Another option I thought about you can get a 5.25 to slim 5.25 + 2.5 + usb adapter that uses a slim laptop optical drive with 2 USB ports facing the front under the optical and a spot for SSD. Some have media card reader too. Then you could put a large capacity HDD for storage!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes!

[@paulbruss7266]

I have recently been attempting to capture the recovery discs from an HP Slimline s3000n. Unfortunately, I think there is something wrong with the motherboard because it randomly turns off. I've tested different RAM and a different power supply with the same intermittent results. Because of this I've been unable to create and validate the recovery discs. I have attempted cloning the drive to a VHD and booting in a virtual machine with VirtualBox, however, Vista Bluescreens on startup. If I conduct a system restore from the harddrive in the VM, Windows installs, however when it gets to the HP configuration, it detects improper hardware and fails to continue booting. Any tips?

[@TheRetroRecall]

As for the randomly turning off, did you take a look at the CPU cooler? Is it clean? Are there any extra cards installed that can be removed? Try unplugging everything from the system (USB, etc) except for what is needed. I find systems from this era when attempting to virtualize the environment, that the drivers can act up causing blue screens even in a VM.

[@VioletDragonsProjects]

Would it be possible to do a revisit video on Installing Windows XP on this unit? Had one of these in for a downgrade from Vista to XP years ago but had a lot of issues with Drivers had to put Vista back on it as XP wouldn't work. Would be interesting to see if you had the same problem. Now this was years ago though so my knowledge back then wasn't all there.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I can certainly put it on the list, however I cannot promise anything. I think the driver packages today would give us an advantage with installing windows xp though.

[@RoyHess666]

I couldn't stop looking at all the defective caps

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha yes... And it still worked lol

[@RoyHess666]

@@TheRetroRecall *THAT* is what surprised me the most, I guess the bad caps weren't either too bad to not work, or they were used for unimportant voltage rails

[@TheRetroRecall]

Or just about to break and destroy everything lol!

[@SJ_new]

I want to see the second video right now

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha! Soon, I need parts first!

[@KOSMOS1701A]

rumor has it that if you just watch a piano black object you can see fingerprints and scratches appear in real time.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha! I feel like that's true.

[@mikesapienza1211]

I had an Intel Pentium version of that PC. It ran Ok for what it was.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed. And upgradable which can help prolong its use.

[@mikesapienza1211]

@@TheRetroRecall I ended up ripping parts from it and combining them with 2 other towers from that time. This was mainly due to failing drives and 10 years ago, I couldn't afford to buy drives or equipment to clone them at the time. I now have the parts swapped into a tower with 4GB of RAM, a Core 2 Duo E4700 processor, a GeForce 9300GE, and the 256GB drive from the Slimline. I have it running WIndows 10 currently and although it's a slow experience, it works for browsing the web and can get around ad supported Hulu because of how slow it is.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice.

[@theexpndables2022]

great job we like your video's

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thank you!!! Glad you are enjoying.

[@johnmay4803]

good 2 see you mr retro recall

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks , glad to have you here as well!

[@horusfalcon]

Yet another HP. Yeah, the AMDs in that generation ran a good bit hotter than the Intels did. I've found that a good polymer heat transfer pad of the type that melts and flows to fill voids works well, but they can be really tough to remove. A good hi-temp heat paste like one of the upper-range Noctua types will be a good choice. Neat trick for getting the system to let you make a new image disk set. I'll have to put that in my Oolie Book.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I never thought of the heat pads, I heard they are good but kind of forgot about them. Noctua also make good fans from what I recall.

[@horusfalcon]

@@TheRetroRecall Yup. Pricey, but usually worth it. I've had good results with Cooler Master, and with Nidec, too (both are cheaper but not quite as durable, or as quiet...) Using a 120 mm will allow you to run it more slowly to move the same amount of air if you also install a fan controller (might be tricky in that case...). Even a manual fan speed controller with a knob on it would do the trick - maybe mount the knob on the back to preserve that retro appearance?

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, you are definitely giving me ideas. I appreciate it. I've had great luck with CoolerMaster to be honest. I think that may be the way I'll go, but those Thermal pads may also be the way I go including future builds.

[@horusfalcon]

@@TheRetroRecall Be careful to get the right type. The ones I used back in the day were included with the heat sink, and had the appearance of silly putty. Slightly tacky to the touch. Just saw a fan controller on Amazon that has the potentiometer knob mounted on a low-profile slot cover... Shop around, man.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Will do, thanks.

[@AntonioGarcia-ti9wc]

Hi. About graphic cards for this, I have 2 suggestions: Nvidia GT 1030 LP, a more affordable option or Nvidia Quadro T1000, a little expensive but excellent.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for the recommendation! I always have trouble finding the low profile form factor. I'll add these to the list and keep my eyes open! Thanks again!

[@OverTallman]

Beware of the DDR4 variants of GT 1030 though as they're a lot worse than the GDDR5 ones, even mid to high end Vega iGPU in Zen 1 APUs are faster.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the info!

[@iiisaac1312]

Crysis came out around the same time as that PC. Would be hilarious to see it try to run it. Would definitely need to add a GPU. A modern one would work, but I'm not sure if it will have drivers available for Vista. Plus it would need to be a low profile one from that era too. You could use a modern GPU with Linux, however, it will require a fair bit of setup. I'll see if I can get it to run on a similar system.

[@TheRetroRecall]

It's funny - I had Crysis in my had before I decided to go the UT2004 route. The video (and raw footage / hours) had already been long enough at that point that I opted for the easy road. Maybe I'll do that in part 2 - the recap and restoration :)

[@iiisaac1312]

@@TheRetroRecall I got Crysis to run. Everything on low at 1920x1200, got about 15-30 FPS. CPU at 100% (Sempron 3400+ single core) the whole time. GPU was an R5 340 instead of the 6150 integrated one. The CPU was holding it back as the GPU sat between 50-70% utilization and used about 800M of VRAM. Not 100% sure how much your BIOS will allow you to give to the GPU though, so it might not even start over insufficient vram. Game itself used about 1G of ram. A recap would be needed if you plan on adding a GPU and pushing more current through the system.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ohhh for sure, the recap is the next step.

[@jusun2009]

48:00 Pegatron is a Taiwanese company which manufacturers product for technology companies. It’s owned by ASUS.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the info!

[@jusun2009]

@@TheRetroRecall no problem

[@SJ_new]

currently available Nvidia 210 ddr3 1gb card low profile would work in this plus a fresh install of win 7 pro ultimate updated to max after all caps recapping will bring this pc to modern days and give it atleast half a decade more functionality ...

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed!! Stay tuned!

[@jamesdye4603]

I actually like the shiny black cases, and I thought Vista was just fine.

[@TheRetroRecall]

You have me with the Vista - always enjoyed it and never had issues. You don't have me on the shiny cases 😂

[@danteblake9701]

Up intil last year I had a similar Mediacenter version I salvaged years ago.. It had 2gb of ram, working wifi a dead tv tuner card, & a hard drive that barely worked. I did a clean install & used it for years, It ran hot all the time. Original cooling was insufficient for such a small case. Deskstars run hot which did'nt help.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes for sure - the lack of cooling was something I instantly noticed. That said, it will be addressed in the next video along with the cap repairs.

[@gentuxable]

21:59 Too me looking at that "M2N61-AR" screams ASUS so loud, this is such a typical font, I've seen hundreds of times.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I think someone pointed out that ASUS owns this company - so it would make sense.

[@Troppa17]

@@TheRetroRecall That's right. Pegatron is ASUS' ODM / OEM / EMS branch and number two after Foxconn in that business. I guess they would've only made the board but the case and assembled everything for HP as well.

[@christopherdecorte1599]

I think you could get the gpu score up a little by doubling the video ram in the bios it won't be the best solution but I think you can improve the score to 5.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I never thought of that, thanks! I think the best route will of course be the upgrade of the graphics card. I just need to find a low profile one that will work.

[@Troppa17]

@@TheRetroRecall It's an GeForce 6150 SE doubling the Frame Buffer Size will do nothing. Faster RAM would help a little but I guess that Buffalo stick might hold the system back. If you want to upgrade I would suggest the original GTX 750 Ti with 2GB VRAM. It should be supported by Windows Vista 32 bit and there is a GigaByte and a Galaxy low profil version. I guess that might be the fastest option at least if you will stick to Vista.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Sounds good, appreciate it!

[@treahblade]

I have 3 Nvidia GTX 710 cards that I pulled out of an old security PC that needed this many cards for multi monitor. They are very small cards and I suspect they came with low profile adapters as the VGA connector on them is optional. I may have a low profile bracket for one at work and if so I would not mind sending you one as I have no use for 3 gtx 710's lol. EDIT: I just checked online and indeed this card did come with a low profile bracket option when new. It would be probably trivial to find the brackets for them.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Please let me know!!!

[@treahblade]

@@TheRetroRecall I checked today and yes indeed it has the low profile bracket with it. Its one of them dual bracket thinys but the vga is optional. Feel free to send me some info and ill send it over :)

[@TheRetroRecall]

That's awesome, please send an email to [e-mail] and we can go from there.

[@stevencamp6824]

Archive was hit with a Denial of service attack i believe

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah I think that's how it ended. The first attack was the cybersecurity attack which resulted in 31 million passwords being compromised.

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

IA is not offline for me, I used it a week ago, and today as well for Amiga stuff.

[@TheRetroRecall]

It has been up and down.

[@Trylen]

Asus and Pegatron are sister companies. Asus is more to the consumer side whereas Pegatron is more to the enterprise side, though now-a-days they each do both, They're both based off Pegasus, Pega-tron and Asus, though I've never heard anyone say it as Usus..

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the info.

[@JohanlastZa]

I bought one of those cloning stations. Tested in twice so far and works 100%. No computer needed.

[@williamjones4483]

Yeah, those are nice. I've got one also and it's a time saver in having to connect a traditional HDD to my computer. Before I had to open the computer and connect the HDD to power and SATA.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes, in this case a PC is required, however I know there are others that done need one. Either way, they are worth their weight in gold for sure!

[@TheRetroRecall]

100%

[@jerfle7787]

Those nvidia 6150 chipsets would cook themselves. They needed active cooling.

[@TheRetroRecall]

The one thing I noticed right away is the heat coming from the hardware. I could easily see how it could overheat. I'll have to find away to introduce more active cooling when I go to repair the system.

[@0MeALot0]

Its funny to see people putting in the effort to restore the oem bloatware. First thing i used to do was installing my own os getting rid of the bloat. Had a Packard Hell laptop during the vista period and i deleted vista within days going back to a fresh xp install. I really did not like vista at all, although i did like win 7 which is basically the improved vista.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahah bakc in the day I was like you of course - fresh OS and driver install day 1. Now years later, I like to do the restorations and see what was actually installed on these systems as part of their bloat offering lol.

[@maxtornogood]

Slim PC but not a slim video clip! Adrian's Digital Basement would be proud, heh! 😅. Plenty of "Crapacitors" to be seen but it passes diagnostics & ran just fine for the period that you were playing with it. The "Hitachi" DeskStar HDD clearly reminds you too much of the IBM "DeathStar", you don't trust it!

[@gentuxable]

Actually the faulty Deskstar legend is way overblown, the capacitor plague quite underblown. IBM had a faulty drive series 75GXP around 2001, the affected drives were about 15-75 GB. This PC is from 2009, I'm sure if the drive fails it has nothing to do with that fault. I had a Hitachi Deskstar 2TB in a NAS, bought the drive new about 2011, used it all the time, since 2022 it gives out SMART warnings that complete failure is imminent (which I personally had no other drives, dead or near dead doing) but it still works. Hitachi hard drives (Ultrastar) are still made to this day by Western Digital and are very reliable.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha, yes, it was about 3 ish hours of footage down to just over an hour. This was a fun one so its hard to not include everything :). Ive personally never had any issues with the Deathstar era of drives, however I upgraded to SSD as I felt this PC which is running Vista needed a fighting chance haha!

[@TheRetroRecall]

I will agree with you here on both counts. As I mentioned in my other comment I never experienced a Deathstar issue. The cap plague was definitely under played and to be honest I feel when these computers stopped working, people just tossed them instead of realizing what the true issue was - the capacitors. I come accross so many now that I don't know if I'll be able to recap them all haha.

[@laurencejohnson4106]

A fine restoration project!👍 Is 4 gig of ram., the maximum?

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, 4gb is the max for this board.

[@laurencejohnson4106]

@@TheRetroRecall Thanks for confirming that.

[@TheRetroRecall]

No problem!!

[@SinaFarhat]

Nice! About a year ago I needed to connect a 3.5 inch hdd externaly to my window 10 pc so I got myself a two drive hdd toaster, it turned out that the two drive comes with a cloner tool so if I ever need the hdd cloning option I have it.

[@TheRetroRecall]

That's awesome and these toasters are a great addition for anyone doing retro restorations. It makes it so easy.

[@sjftech]

I really don't see the need for some of these negative comments. Don't like it? Don't watch it. Move on and watch something you DO like. Constructive criticism is fine, being negative for the hell of it isn't.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I completely agree.

[@JoshuaDominic]

I’m sorry but this case still looks modern to me. It could pass in my book for 2025 usage.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Don't be sorry - to you it can still be used which is exactly what I showcase VS some who throw systems away after 3 years because they are 'old'. Also, retro / vintage is quite subjective.

[@erichkohl9317]

Yeah I always thought Vista was cool, although you have to be careful saying that in public otherwise you might get arrested lol. Right now I have a Dell OptiPlex Core2Duo that I got from a coworker that has Vista on it, the real deal that I bought back in ‘07.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Lol!!! What about talking about Windows ME in public?? 🤣

[@erichkohl9317]

@@TheRetroRecall Exactly. Although I have no experience with ME so I couldn’t say. 🙂

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ah, well it had a similar reception as Vista.

[@Hadisabetghadam]

For AMD Get HD 7750 Or R5 Series

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks!

[@9852323]

I max out CPU and ram plus add an SSD and put windows 10/11 on machines this age.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Isn't there a limitation with 11 not being able to be installed?

[@9852323]

@@TheRetroRecall if you create your USB drive with Rufus it can remove the fake requirements. Windows 11 is technically able to run on anything that can run 10 in my experience. Tried a whole shed full of computers from the XP-8.1 era and they all ran 11 just fine.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes yes, you are right, I saw those options in there.

[@Hadisabetghadam]

Look To Nvidia Gt Series Like GT730 Or GT1030 Or GT1010 If Need Low Profile Thing(Just Get GT1030 GDDR5)

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for the recommendation!

[@rmcdudmk212]

I think Dell still use the Slimline branding on their SFF workstation Precision series

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hmmm I've never heard of Dell using Slimline specifically as I thought that was part of HP / Compaq branding. Then again, I could be incorrect.

[@SJ_new]

this could also be turned into a youtube watching pc by putting ubuntu on it

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yup - neat how Linux can bring back older machines like this.

[@aaldrich1982]

SSDs in old computers do wonders

[@larryk731]

Used to have a quad core i5 - replaced with ssd and got additional 2 years out of it for total of 10 years of use. Had to replace it all 2 years ago when windows would no longer update

[@TheRetroRecall]

I agree. I try to use spinning rust wherever possible, however if I want / need a performance boost - this is definitely the route to go!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes, it's amazing how an SSD can bring new extended life to an older PC.

[@ultrametric9317]

Nothing changes :) HP laptops have always been the bad sort of scorchers. And the software is always the absolute pits. It's worse than bloatware, it's like digital debris. I remember old HP so well. Once had an HP-UX workstation as my personal machine. Even in the worst days, the hardware seemed respectable but the software (on PCs) was just abysmal.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha!! Digital debris 🤣

[@erniemiller1953]

I have a 4 year old Slim Line. I will NEVER buy another HP PC...on purpose...I am so disappointed how crappy the design is.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah I found the most recent PC's have really gone down hill.

[@jasonme3557]

these were so bad

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahaha the caps were for sure lol

[@Sevunteen]

The breakdown of all the bullcrap buttons and stickers is just too much.... we can see the things. unless your doing it for the blind... then you read every sticker, milking the content run time....😴😴🛌

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate the feedback, however if you don't like it you don't have to watch. There are many viewers from all walks of life that enjoy the review of the system in detail as well as to your point, may have difficulty seeing the content. Some equal feedback - There's this really cool button on the interface called fast forward, or you can also choose to not watch at all :) Thanks for commenting and keeping the algorithm strong!

[@jimbaulch8996]

This guy just yaps so much I fast forward to the last 10 mins before anything happens,just get on with it.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Good thing that fast forward button is there for you to use :). Thanks for watching and commenting helping the KZbin algorithm recommend the video to the many others who enjoy the content. Have a great day, and make sure to check out my other videos!