HP Vista driver downloads

Hey you don't even want to know the issues I have through my company. I work for a large telecommunication company that offers internet service and my team needs a Vista Machine to help our techs troubleshoot. Our IT guy called our corporate IT people for a copy of Vista for a machine and the gist of what they said was "Vista?!? Uhmm, What's that?". I sure hope they was joking. *sigh* Heck I am the only one on our team with a Vista machine (my personal laptop) and right now the sound card driver issue is driving me nuts. I think some companies (or at least most support personnel at the front lines) would like to be more prepared but when any company has to deal with a Corporate enviroment feet get dragged like you wouldn't believe. "This has to be approved by so and so, and oh those people have to approve that first also before we can do this...blah, blah, blah"...end my reply rant

BTW I can't get Vista to just use the default drivers. After I uninstall the sound card and my computer starts up fine, after a bit it reloads the same stupid driver and does the odd blinking screen thing again (along with other issues I seem to now notice). Now I also am unable to force it to load a standard sound driver (ie when video card drivers do not work, use the standard VGA adapter, pre Vista easy repair trick). Is there another way around this? Any advice would be nice. Thanks!

 

mysterie -- Your story isn't I suppose all that surprising, but scary nonetheless. Vista's been in the works for five years and no one in upper management ANYWHERE seems to have payed enough attention to know it was coming out and prepare for the release.

As for your sound card issue -- hmm... I assume you've already tried using driver update and driver rollback. I can't fathom why one of those wouldn't let you install the standard Windows driver and then keep it. Beyond that, the only things that I can think of are using system restore to go back before the bad driver was installed and reinstalling Vista. Not the best options, but the only things I can think of at the moment if the normal fixes don't work.

 

HP need to hurry the **** up and release those new drivers

 

Any news on the webcam drivers for Vista 64x Ultimate, the driver on the main post dosent seem to work for me.

After that im waiting to drivers for the coprosessor, and 2 base system devices whatever they are...

Windows seems to have sorted all the rest with default drivers fine on my dv6045nr...

 

AFox -- The base system devices are probably the card reader, or Quickplay buttons. Drivers on first post. As for the webcam, there appear to be at least two different models they've used on different systems. The one another member ripped off a system in Best Buy is the only one we've gotten ahold of so far. HP hasn't posted any webcam drivers to their FTP yet.


Edit: Updated the main post with the few new drivers today. If you use HP Wireless Assistant, there's a new version there, but nothing too exciting.

 

Hi gang, I found this forum/thread searching for webcam drivers for my new HP dv6235 notebook pre-loaded with Vista. Thanks for the active up-keep jadedraverla. I’m new to the HP scene and I have a few questions. So my new dv6235 notebook came pre-installed with Vista. Most drivers were present, however some are basic, like the ricoh webcam drivers (don’t appear in scanners and cameras, or any other software, but I haven’t tried MS Messenger yet because I don’t use it), and Quick Launch buttons can’t be re-programmed. Some drivers were unstable, like the Intel wireless LAN and graphics drivers, they were actually crashing. I was able to pick up new drivers from the HP site which helped.

But, I don’t understand why we need to use HP released drivers? For example I downloaded 945GM chipset (GMA950) drivers directly from Intel and they are much newer than the HP ones, they are more stable and my performance index went up a point.

Quickplay 3.0. What is the purpose of this thing, I really don’t get it. From reading the marketing material I thought you would be able to play media on your laptop without booting into Windows. However, Quickplay, as delivered, only works from within Windows, what’s the point if Windows Media Center is present, why would anyone use Quickplay?

That brings me to all of the pre-installed crap. There is so much third party and heavy HP software installed it’s bringing the notebook to its knees. I understand HP keeps prices down by pre-installing third party software. Problem is a lot of it doesn’t uninstall cleanly, or doesn’t uninstall at all. I’m not sure why HP’s own barrage of software in on there, it’s just another layer on top of Vista’s existing functionality and it appears very inefficiently programmed. When I first booted I looked at the performance and error logs and they are filled with errors and warnings dating back to December, obviously HP’s doing, and the same errors and warnings keep occurring, a bunch during startup and shutdown.

Since Vista is now installed with a drive image, the recovery partition uses the same technique; it’s an image of a pre-installed Vista drive with all of the software already installed. This means I get no installation options, no way to get a clean system. I’m going to borrow a clean Vista DVD and install that (using my notebook’s product key), but my question is do I need any of the HP/third party software, is any of it actually useful? I’ve managed to extract all of the software from the recovery partition using Microsoft’s ImageX so I can always install some of it after.

Sorry for the length of this message and the rant.

 

the only reason were waiting for HP to release thier drivers is because we just need the Conexant high def audio driver. the old ones has bugs with vista it makes lagg at start up noob

 

Hi, I am new on this forum, and I would like to thank jadedraverla for keeping us up to date with the hp vista drivers.

Have you guys tried to play games with the current driver? For some reason my fps lowered drastically while playing games. Is there any way to fix this? Also, I cannot adjust the brightness of my screeen using the function key, and I've noticed that vista doesn't read the actual video memory when I go to display properties, can someone explain what's going on with the video memory? It says something like 32mb, 287 and 252. I don't know what do they mean. :/

 

for the FN key to work, u need to install quick launch button. u need to also install the Driver for your graphics card. intel or nvidia. go to thier site for thier drivers

 

I've installed quicklaunch drivers and I'm still having the screen brightness issue

 

I just woke up, so let me see if I can go through your questions one at a time. Basically, you're absolutely right. Whether you upgrade to Vista on your own, or buy a new HP notebook with Vista, HP is WAY behind in providing drivers (especially working ones). They are getting new drivers posted to their FTP site with some frequency, but they are MUCH slower about getting them to their website and cross-posting them between models. Webcam and Quicklaunch driver, like you said, don't provide all the functions that they did on XP, leaving many people annoyed.

To your question about getting drivers from places other than HP, absolutely, for the few drivers you can, that makes perfect sense. In the first post I describe how to do that with graphics drivers (which for Nvidia get updated constantly, but MUCH more slowly by HP), and I linked to the OEM's touchpad drivers, though HP then caught up with those. I, too, am using the inf update from Intel (basically what other manufacturers call a chipset driver) but that's about the only it. Given the proprietory nature of notebooks, you are largely "locked in" to their drivers... and especially their add-on software (HP Wireless Assistant, HP Help and Support, etc.) should you choose to install them.

As for Quickplay, it used to have a point. It really did. In XP, when you had a separate Quickplay partition to use without booting to Windows, it was kind of a neat program. The new version, under Vista, has very little point, though if you get the Home Basic or Business versions of Vista which don't have Media Center, it could be a useful app I suppose. Otherwise, it seems like it's mainly just there so you have an app that can correctly use the remote and quickplaunch buttons since they're no longer reassignable. The only other useful thing I noticed was that you can use it to view/record your webcam in the new version. Since that appears to be the only app they include that does that now, I suppose that's of some use.

Lastly, about the preinstalled software, HP is making money putting much of it on there, and they basically seemed willing to load up the new machines with anything that didn't cause Vista to BSOD immediately. Get rid of it. If the bloatware doesn't uninstall cleanly, as you say, then I would complain to HP and see if can get an OEM Vista install disc from HP. You'll probably need to get your demand escalated to a case manager as HP's "techs" think that all anyone would ever need is the restore partition/discs. I'm doubtful if the idea of borrowing a disc from someone will work. HP's keys are OEM keys and its my understanding that they don't work on retail discs. You can try, but I don't think it will work.

If you are going to try a full reinstall, forget about the restore partition and make sure you backup the SwSetup folder. That folder contains the drivers HP shipped your system with, and install files for most of the software. Unfortunately, as you've noticed, some of those drivers have already been superceded but it's easier to just back up the whole directory and then figure out which you use after you've got Windows running.

Anyway, thanks for the comment and good luck -- let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the comment. As for games -- it's really hit and miss with Vista right now. There are some games (Scarface comes to mind) that won't run on Vista at all, though most will either run correctly, or can be run correctly if ran as an administrator or in compatibility mode.

Frame rate drops are caused by a couple of things. One is Vista (and lousy video card drivers). I highly recommend using either the 100.54 or 100.59 Nvidia drivers from www.laptopvideo.go if you plan on gaming. HP's drivers are outdated, and game play suffers on the older drivers. In the first post, I've described the process of using the newer drivers from laptopvideo2go, so you might check it out. If you're using an Intel GMA950 graphics chip, then grab the latest video driver directly from Intel for the same reason.

The other problem you can easily run into is low RAM. Neither the Nvidia nor Intel solutions uses completely dedicated video RAM. They use a small amount of video RAM (judging by what you posted I'm guessing 32 MB for your card) and pull additional RAM from system memory as needed. This is also why you get all the weird video RAM amounts reported by your system. The actual amount of RAM being used by the graphics chip is constantly in flux, and different ways of measuring video RAM produce different results. In general, this isn't altogether bad, and makes systems (especially notebooks) cheaper by not having to have 256 MB of fast video RAM on the system board, but if Vista is running low on memory you can run into problems. If you have 1 GB of RAM this can somewhat frequently cause slow downs, especially if you are playing a RAM-intensive game. If you have 2 GB of RAM, this really shouldn't cause a slowdown in most games as you're less likely to run into memory-capacity problems. Either way, its a good idea to close down any and all unncessary background programs before you start a demanding game to keep as much memory free as possible.

Hope that helps.

 

The thing with the ram isnt correct. ALthough I do not know why some people get wierd reports on how much ram is there I do know some systems have completely dedicated ram. My system came wtih a 512meg vid card. It actually has 512 megs of its own ram and takes nothing from the system. This was proved by adding only 256megs of system ram in at one time. If my vid card did not have 512 of its own it couldnt report that it did. It would haev to report lower amounts. Plus... the 7600 go does not use turbocache which is nvidias way to share with system ram. Being that it doesnt have the feature in that paticular gpu there is no way its sharing.

 

BTW is there any way to tell if the system is actually using the SD for readyboost or not at any given time? It set up for it as far as I know. I went through the proccess of it. But is there any way to tell if its really being utilized?

 

Byrds6 -- Yeah, what I said about shared RAM wasn't meant to apply to the dv9000 series (with GeForce Go 7600), which is the only one offered with fully dedicated video RAM. I should have clarified that. The weird graphics RAM reports are common on the rest of the systems, which all use shared RAM.

As for ReadyBoost, open Windows Explorer, right click on the SD card, select properties, and finally the ReadyBoost tab. Make sure it says "Use this device for Readyboost" and make sure the amount of space to use is set where you want it.

 

Thanks for all of the info! Oh, Quickplay can make use of the Webcam! I hadn't noticed that, thanks. I guess that's going to be it's use for me for now... until it shows up under scanners and cameras. By the way the quick launch media buttons and IR remote control both work very well with Windows Media Center and Player, I just wanted to reassign the button that starts QuickPlay (circular arrow).

I got my hands on a Vista DVD (Ultimate), installed it on a spare partition of another PC using my HP notebook's license key, just to test, and it worked perfectly. It detected that the key was an OEM key for Home Premium, and installed just that (I didn't connect to the internet, no worry). So far so good, I just hope that it will activate fine once I install it on the notebook, I can't see why not... heck I could even call activate and explain if need be. It looked very clean compared to what came preinstalled on my notebook.

Thanks for the tip, I made a backup of the SwSetup directory as well as burning the recovery DVDs, just in case; next I'll re-partition and reformat the whole thing and install a clean Vista... when I have time.

 

Blocnotes -- good to hear the key works on the DVD you have. Can you confirm that its a retail DVD by any chance, becuase I've heard from others that they haven't gotten it to work (not with HP OEM keys though). If it does, that's great news for A LOT of people who want a clean Vista install. Let us know if installation and activation goes well.

Anyway, glad to help.

 

The DV9000 series gives weird reports too though. I thinkt hats because they use the same BIOS and possibly mb for differnet modles. who knows for sure though lol.

 

Its selevted for readyboost. I was just wondering was there some way to tell it was really being used.

 

Jadadraverla,
I am using the same video card like the one you have, and its not supposed to be a share memory ram. I bought it as a dedicated memory. Why vista read it as a shared one? 32mb??? wth? windows xp read it as a stand alone memory (128mb).
My laptop has 1gb memory, and the game I play is not a high demanding one(Guild Wars). I have an old laptop which run this game perfectly fine. It has nvidia 32mb, not shared memory and 762mb ram, and the fps is fine. Btw, I've installed the driver version 100.59 from the website you gave me yet still have the same problem.
I have the same laptop as you except intel centrino duo, 1GB memory and 80GB hard drive. Please advise.

 

Only the dv9000 series with GeForce 7600 uses entirely dedicated memory. All the other systems use shared memory, though HP somewhat distorts that fact (read "lies"). They use the word dedicated, because the chip is dedicated, but make it sound like the video RAM is as well, which isn't correct.

The GeForce Go 7200 (in the dv2000t series) uses 32 MB of dedicated memory, and, under XP, uses another 96 MB of system memory, for a total of 128 MB. The drivers for Vista operate differently, and the chip can access more than 128 MB of total memory, but because the amount it actually uses fluctuates with its needs, the amount reported by various utilities will vary.

My guess is that the problem will fix itself when the game puts out an official Vista update and when Nvidia gets out some more refined drivers. In the meantime, I don't know what to suggest other than making sure the latest game updates are installed, and then playing with different settings (vertical sync, AA, AF, etc.) to find ones that perform better.

 

Thanks, jadadraverla, I've figured that its a simple driver issue that is affecting the video card perfomance.
Another thing, I've noticed when I have my touchpad locked before but after I restart my pc, the touchpad doesn't get locked in, its kinda weird. I dont know if you have experienced this or not, but its really annoying not having your touchpad locked after the pc is restarted, and then I'll have to click the button twice to lock it back on.

do you know the problem of this? The function key is not working when I try to reduce the brightness but the rest are working. is this a vista issue? Please advise.

 

Mystique Lady -- Glad you got that figured out. For the touchpad, all I can advise is to use the latest touchpad drivers from the first post. I've never experienced that problem, though.

I've also never had the problem with screen brightness. Make sure you have upgraded to the latest Vista-ready BIOS for your model, and then install the latest Quicklaunch button drivers. Reboot and see if that helps. Alternatively, you should be able to go into your power options, and adjust the screen brightness with an on-screen slider from there.

Hope that helps.

 

Hi, I'm new to this forum, but it has helped me loads while trying to get vista working on my HP dv9088ea.

Essentially I really quite like vista, but like a lot of people on this forum, I am very dissapointed by HP and their lack of drivers. It's not as if Vista has only just appeared. Dunno how the boss of HP could stand on the stage with Bill gates at the launch, when they seem to be nowhere near ready for it.

Anyway, rant over lol. Wonder if anyone can help with my problem:

Basically I have now got vista working well apart from 2 things. The built in webcam and the Yuan EC300 tv tuner. I have got the latest drivers as of today and they seem to install perfectly. However neither of them will display a picture.
The webcam looks like it is working, the light comes on but the screen is blank (used a couple of free capture programs).
The TV Tuner again looks like it's working but in Media center it says there is no signal. Despite having scanned and listed all the channels.

I have XP MCE on a dual boot and both devices work perfectly.

Spent 2 long nights trying to figure this out and I am losing the will to live now
Please help if anyone has got any ideas.

Thanks

 

To those waiting on "Waikiki" HD Audio drivers for their dv2000t systems:

HP, in their infinite wisdom, have posted one of the HD Audio drivers I linked to awhile ago for the dv2000 and dv2100 series machines. The driver does not work as it is for "Venice" chipsets, not "Waikiki" ones. I experimented with the driver, adding the correct device ID to the inf file, which allows the driver to install, though Device Manager responds with a "Code 10 -- unable to start device". I've fired off another email to HP, informing them that the driver they posted does not work for the systems they posted it for.

If you didn't have a problem with HP's pathetic Vista support, here's one more brilliant blunder to consider.

 

LOL thats so lame. They posted another driver up for my machine recently too but it had the same buggy result as the last one. It made boot times longer than they were before and the OS wasnt ready as it appeared to be when it booted.

 

Hopefully I can be of some assistance. Im running a DV8301 nr with Home Premium 64. I found this driver http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=23602&st=0and installed it through my device manager and now I have sound. It may be because I had pressed F8 on boot and allowed unsigned drivers already that I didnt have to take all the other steps that were listed ::shrugs lol :: Im still unable to control my sound with the Quickplay Keys but I havent installed the driver on the first page for that so we shall see. Hopefully this will work for others as well as it did for me

 

Welcome to the forum Quietstorm627 -- that's a different driver than the one needed for the dv2000t, but I'm sure others with the 8000 series (and possibly the 5000 series) will be looking for that driver. Conexant has so many rediculous variations of HD Audio and AC '97 audio, its astounding. The fact that they don't release unified drivers is even more astounding.

 

Yes, it is a retail version of Vista Ultimate. I read somewhere that all retail versions of Vista are supposed to have the exact same content on the discs, the key determines what is installed, and it's what happened when I tried it with my HP key, it installed Home Premium with 'OEM' in the product ID. I won't get to wipe the notebook for a few days at least...

 

Just an update for dv2000t owners:

I got a reply from HP tech support, saying that they forwarded my (rather lengthy) email to the driver team to hopefully get the "Waikiki" audio problem corrected. I'll let you know what I find out.

 

Hey JADE. i just install Vista Ultimate retail and i wana ask about the ready boost.
i GOt 1 GB SD card and i stick it in and tell it to do ready boost. how dose this thing work. i see the blue light blinking all the time. wat is that mean?? And dang
Ultimate got so much freaking stuff in it im lost. i was business lite version made by someone that was only 700 MB. but now i got the real deal
BTW the new audio driver dosnt work!

 

HPFan -- The blue light means the system is accessing the memory card. It'll do it less as time goes on. The first few days you use it, the system notices the files the get accessed a lot and copies them to the SD card, so it can read them from there instead of the hard drive.

Also, what new audio driver? I haven't posted a "waikiki" driver yet, and I haven't seen an update on Windows Update. If you mean the one HP posted in their driver downloads section for the dv2000t series, then, yeah, it's the same driver I posted a week or so ago. They claim its for our systems, but is a driver for the wrong codec. I emailed HP, and they supposedly forwarded the email to the HP driver team, explaining that they have posted an incompatible driver for the hardware in our machines. This was just an hour or two ago. Hopefully, I'll get a response of some kind tomorrow.

 

hey JADE. do u need to install the UAA1 before installing the conextant driver in vista? im talking about the conexant for XP version and im going to install the old one in vista. so is UAA1 needed to be installed at all?? thx

 

HPFan - No, the HD Audio bus-system driver (or whatever it was called) is built-in to Vista, so you don't need that part of the driver -- just the Conexant HD audio driver.

 

just wondering if any one has got a web cam on the dv9000 to work on vista 64

 

hey I have a problem with my card reader. It doesnt work!! I cant read any card and the driver that you posted doesnt seem to work either. Help Help! Thanks.

 

Mystique Lady -- lets see what we can do... which type of card are you trying to read? SD card, XD, MS, or MMC? The SD card reader is supported natively by Windows, and there is no specific driver you need. The others require a driver, and it seems like the one I posted has worked for most people. Try using a program like WinRAR to extract the sp34373.exe file you downloaded. Then navigate to the x86 folder and run DpInst.exe . Say yes to any questions about installing this driver, etc. and it should install fine. I suppose its possible that there are other card readers out there, in which case the driver won't work, but I haven't run across any yet. Let us know how it goes.

 

i got an issue with VISTA. when my computer boot up after the welcome screen, every thing load up real fast then the hard drive just stop running. 20 sec later it starts to run again. during that 20 sec delay i cant open some programs. EX: diskeeper. it says the service is not started. but after that 20 sec the screen blinks and the hard drive start running again. and i can open any program now. help me with this, i hate this problem

 

Jadedraverla,
I've attached a screenshot of my device manager for your reference, and I just did what you suggested me to do, still no luck yet. I am trying to get MS reader to work. help help, thanks!

 

Mystique Lady -- Do me a favor, and find out what the Device_ID is for your MS Card reader. Click properties on the device in device manager, then goto details, and finally Hardware IDs. List the first one. For example, mine is: PCVEN_1180&DEV_0592&SUBSYS_30B2103C&REV_0A . If your is different then it means you may need a different driver. I might be able to find it for you, but I'll need the ID for your machine. If it's the same, then there's something wrong, and the driver should install.

Let me know.

 

Jadedraverla,
I've attached 2 more screenshots. The first one is for MS properties which unfortunately didn't show anything like yours, and the second one is for some unknown devices that didnt fully installed for some reason. Please refer to my previous screenie, you will see what I am taking about. Can you please take a look at them and tell me what they are? why does it pop up as unknown devices? Thanks!

 

OK, the fact that it starts with RIMSPTK means that its the card itself that it can't use, as opposed to the card reader, which is the RIMSPTK driver. Can you confirm that under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" there are three Ricoh controller listings for the different card readers, and that they say they are working? If so, then that means the driver installed correctly, and that the problem is of some other nature. Did this same memory stick work on the notebook before, under Win XP?

As for the other devices, Windows should definitely have recognized the display device on its own. Try doing a driver update on that listing to see if it installs "Generic Plug and Play monitor" driver for it. The other two I'm not 100% sure of, but they say "on HP Quickplay buttons". So, I would try 1)updating to the latest Vista BIOS F.23 if you haven't already, then 2)uninstalling the Quickplay button drivers, then rebooting, and 3) Reinstalling the latest Quickplay button drivers. Hopefully that will take care of that.

 

I just checked it, and yes they are listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section. I don't know what's going on with it. They worked fine under XP. I have the latest bio installed F.23 before I installed vista. Gonna try uninstalling and reinstalling back Quickplay buttons drivers. Will let you know how did it go later.

 

updating news for quickplay issue...
I just tried it. It didn't get fixed. ((((

 

Hello all and thank you for the informative discussion on this matter so far.

Is there any news on Waikiki sound?

Similarly how is anyone finding the nVidia drivers? Are they performing correctly or well?

 

Hi guys,

Firstly I'd like to say thanks to Jade for sharing these links, it has helped alot!

I have a dv8000t series laptop with a GeForce Go 7600, I have tried all the drivers from laptopvideo2go.com and HP's 'official signed' drivers, they install fine, but when I play a game, I get green, pink, black vertical lines on my screen. Is anyone else having this problem?

If anyone has a Texas Instruments card reader (like me) the XP drivers work fine, they can be found here.

I am still waiting for the 'Waikiki' drivers too! I cannot get a true digital output from the SPDIF, only PCM! Otherwise the XP drivers sort of work.

 

hey guys need built-in webcam and mic. software for
hp dv2122tu.plzzzzzzz.need 'em urgently

 

plz dude post hp dv2122tu in-built webcam and mic, softwares.plz i need it urgently.

 

plzzzz .hp inbuilt webcam and mic. softwares.plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Hi

I know this topic is for Vista drivers but I have a big problem.
I have just bought a Pavilion dv6226 US preinstalled Vista but I dont want to use Vista and I installed XP OS to my notebook.But the problem is I couldnt find the drivers for XP.

So can anyone help me how can I find these drivers.Cuz i cant use my computer and I really need it.Where can i find XP compatible drivers for my pavilion dv6226us.

Thanks in advance.

 

I just discovered something. You can use the old Conexant audio drivers for XP/dv2000t. They installed it fine. After the installation is complete, it ask you to restart, click "restart" . Afterwards, go to panel control, audio, recording tab, and select "microphone" then set it as "default". It should work fine for you guys now. ENjoy...