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I have spent the last few days battling to get Windows 8 RTM installed on my HP Touchsmart IQ500 and today I finally got it working so I thought I would document my solution to save pulling their hair out like I have.

My HP Touchsmart originally shipped with Windows Vista and over the last few years has been upgraded to Windows 7. Back when the Windows 8 Release Candidate was issued I did a clean install which worked very well as Windows 8 works much better than Windows 7 on the Touchsmart.

So this week I thought I would get the final version of Windows 8 install on the device and take advantage of the new apps. Seeing as upgrading from the RC to RTM isn’t supported I did a clean install of Windows 8 64bit.

The initial setup went very well just as other installs of Windows 8 but then after the install was finishing and Windows 8 started up for the first time the problems started. Windows would get up to the startup screen and then the screen would go black and there was no disk activity, I left it for a couple of hours incase it was just taking it’s time but nothing would work and I have to switch it off by holding down the power. I tried running it again and it did the same thing, it would get to the start up screen and then go black. I tried re-installing Windows and that did the same thing again.

The next thing I tried was pressing F8 during startup and running it in VGA mode which seems to get further in the process, I saw the personalisation screen but then the screen went blank again as it crashed. Another go in VGA mode did the same thing again, I tried a couple of other things and each time there was a couple of seconds of inactivity and it would crash. This made me think that it was a driver and an inactivity problem so I plugged a mouse into the PC and rebooted in VGA mode again. As soon as Windows loaded I kept moving the mouse continually and this prevented Windows from crashing, so in VGA mode and keeping the mouse moving it was fine (even though I did look like I had some kind of nervous tick). I then went in to device manager and selected the basic Windows 8 VGA driver, then Windows worked fine and I could give the mouse a rest.

I could have left Windows 8 in this state but the basic driver is a bit slow so I downloaded the NVIDA GeForce 9300M GS drivers from NVIDA’s site and install the drivers, this sorted out all the problems and now has the correct graphics driver.

It seems like the default drivers that Windows 8 installed for the 9300M were causing the problems and using the NVIDA version it now works fine. I now have Windows 8 working great on the HP Touchsmart, Windows 8 works better than Windows 7 on a touchscreen and I don’t have to keep wiggling the mouse to keep it all running.

Hopefully this helps someone searching for HP Touchsmart problems with Windows 8.

Here are the drivers that worked for me:

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6 thoughts on “How to get Windows 8 RTM installed on a HP Touchsmart IQ500”
  1. Thank you so much for posting this to keep me from going crazy when trying to upgrade my IQ506 to Windows 8. However, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get 9.18.13.697 to install either through the Nvidia installer (said it couldn’t fine any compatible hardware) nor through Windows update. I ended up using 9.18.13.286 from June and now I’m ignoring Windows update wanting me to update the drivers. So far so good today. Thanks again.

    1. I tried every driver on Nvidia’s website, but they all gave me the “no compatible hardware found” message – how did you get yours to work?

  2. Thanks for posting this. I wouldn’t have got it going otherwise.

    I have just installed Windows Media Center and have found that a similar problem occurs when logging on for the first time after installation. Moving the mouse helped get me logged in after a couple of attempts. I checked the drivers but still have the NVidia one installed. Any thoughts on what could be the problem? I have still to try rebooting the PC to see if the error still occurs. One thing that is worth doing is preventing Windows from Installing Drivers Updates automatically. To do this go to; Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System\Advanced System Settings and then click the Hardware tab and then Device Installation Settings.

  3. I had the same problem.
    I did not have a USB mouse. But I had sony PS3 controller, which I connected to usb port. WHen computer starts I hold the F8 and pressing the ps3 buttons. Everything worked fine after that

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