XP Up & Running (99.9%) on my new dv6600 (AMD / nVidia based)

help! im having trouble with my xp install i have a dv2620us and i cant figure out the last 'unknown device' in device manager. during installation, i turned off wireless and the touchpad switches . i dunno if that affected the process

btw great guide!

 

try to download and run HP quick launch, it's for the hard button, you can find the link in post #2 also

 

thanks noobody! i realized i may have skipped some steps there

tried downloading sp33258.exe for the quick launch buttons but the ftp is down. anybody kind enuff to share

 

I have notebook F731AU. i have problem wireless, I already install driver wireless Broadcom 4311BG, please see screenshots I send under. what his problem? how want to do? thanks..

 

do a search quick launch at HP site, maybe sp38171 would do

i am not sure what kind hardware you have, there is very little info on hp site regarding you pc, just make sure you get the correct driver for it and mod INF (if necessary) to install it.

AFAIK few has problem about wireless card driver, it is pretty much standard, not even mod needed

are you sure your wired ethernet works OK? usually people need mod INF to install it

post the INF you are pointing to won't hurt either

 

I noticed this too, and have uploaded a couple versions for you to try out. I will be updating post #2 soon with this info.

Quick Link Buttons v6.3 (latest):
http://megafileupload.com/en/file/32721/sp36708-zip.html

Quick Link Buttons v6.1:
http://megafileupload.com/en/file/32723/sp33258-zip.html

After you download and install EITHER one of these files, be sure to install the HP CRITICAL UPDATE from here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...scription.jsp?lang=en&cc=US&swItem=ob-56385-1

The reason I post both, is I know some people only like the latest versions of stuff, but I post the other (older) one because I found it to work better, and actually display the on-screen volume right after installing.
One (major) downside to the older version though, when it displays the on-screen volume level, it (temporarily) steels the window focus while the OSD is displayed.

Apparently HP is completely incompetent, and can't leave the older versions, and just place a link on their pages saying to get the update.
Nor can they even make a NEW version (6.4 perhaps?) that has the critical update built in. What a bunch of idiots...

Based on your screenshot, I would just google for the 1st part of that hardware id, like this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ven_168c&dev_001c&btnG=Search

From the quick google I looked at your drivers required appear to be from the:
Atheros AR5001

And not the Broadcom drivers from this thread.
Good Luck!

 

thedave, thanks a lot..
i use driver Atheros AR5001X...

anyone have my kind's problem, please use this wireless driver

http://www.driversdown.com/drivers/...AN-Driver-6.0.3.85-For-Win2000-XP_25860.shtml

thanks..

 

I have a suggestion for all user. U all have succesfully install the drivers right? You can contribute by using this DriverMax software.

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

What it do is it find and gather all of your OK driver in one folder or compressed file. Then, u just can distribute this driver thru torrent and sharing file server.

Then post the link of the compressed driver here so that i can download it. hehehe... Installing the driver back is as easy as ABC. TRUST ME.

As Example
Driver WinXP for dv6645us
the compressed driver link is here

Driver WinXP for dv6550ee
the compressed driver link is here

Driver Vista for dv6550ee
the compressed driver link is here

SO, the user can download their respective laptop model and OS version file. Install drivermax software. Import the driver using the drivermax software and wallaaa... DONE. Easy right?

download here
http://innofiles.com/soft/dmx/drivermax.exe
http://www.innovative-sol.com/soft/dmx/drivermax.exe

 

OK, so I've got a DV9565ea which has an AMD Turion processor.

The wireless is a Broadcom BCM4312
The LAN Controller is an nVidia MCP65
The motherboard is a Quanta 30DA

Will the drivers on the first page of this thread work OK for me?

Thank

 

I'm guessing they should be fine. You might have to perform a different INF edit for the embedded LAN driver though, and possibly for the WLAN (I doubt the wlan though).
It probably wouldn't hurt to try anyways.
Let us know how it goes!

 

with much help i have so far resolved all the unknown devices i had in device manager and i have been using xp with my notebook (dv2620us) for a while now. but then i tried booting xp using safe mode and to my surprise i couldn't log in because the keyboard wouldn't function. anybody have a similar problem?

 

Hi, I've recently been through all this trouble, installing XP on a dv6609wm. I've finally got everything working, and put together all the drivers I used in a "package" along with instructions to get them all working. Some may or may not work for different DV6000 series notebooks, but maybe it'll help someone. You can find everything here:

http://www.kluneau.rchomepage.com/hpdrivers/

Thanks!
-Keith

 

hello .. this is rahul.. i also have the same prob with the same notebook that is hp dv 6602 au.. plz help me by guidin me to instal xp in this notebook..... it will be a great help......t
thank uuuuu

 

i have a dv6645us pavilion, i need the battery and energy option for xp, where can i download, or if someone has can upload please? because i need a metter of the battery and option energy for optomize

 

that link doesnt seem to let you download anything except some spyware. I have that same problem and the same hardware ID vendor/device info.

Im on a dv9720us - I tried downloading the atheros 5005g drivers - thats what it told me it was - but i get an error code (10) in device manager.

 

Not sure I understand what exactly you are looking for.
The only thing you seem to be able to get out of the laptop currently is a % of battery left.
The only power related type thing I found (that seemed worth anything) was the AMD CPU utility that is suppose to better handle dynamic CPU speed settings (last link in post #2).
Was there something more specific you were looking for?

 

im looking for a driver/software for the battery, about modes of energy and time remaing of the battery in windows xp

 

Nice guide there dave i have almost same config laptop compaq f733au. Installed the AMD drivers which were in 2nd post they sure helped for the battery life (10 mins more life than usual).

But i have 1 problem audio drivers microphone i installed the conexant drivers somehow but microphone doesnt work when i plug it in.

My hardware id is Hardware ID HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30EA&REV_1000

Any help regarding this ?

 

I've just about given up on getting XP to work on my Pavilion dv9720us - I can't for the life of me get the wireless drivers to work.
The device instance id is: PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C&SUBSYS_137A103C&REV_01\4&3B50943C&0&0068
and the compatible id's are:
PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C&REV_01
PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C
PCI\VEN_168C&CC_020000
PCI\VEN_168C&CC_0200
PCI\VEN_168C
PCI\CC_020000
PCI\CC_0200

I tried every possible broadcom driver I could find, as well as (after googling "PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C") a Samsung wireless NIC driver and an "Atheros XP 64-bit" driver (which wouldn't install due to an "incompatible device," even after editing the .inf file).

Could anyone give me any advice?

[Edit] Problem fixed, see page 13

 

Just an update, should anyone have the same problem in the future (or should anyone be willing to help):
I was able to get most of the drivers to install using the link given by keithluneau above. A few of the drivers installed on their own when told to 'update automatically' (specifically, usb-hub drivers and the webcam, although I haven't tested it), and the problem with the audio drivers was fixed by installing a windows update found here (using the audio drivers found here Headphones don't work with these drivers, see below).

However, I am still unable to get the wireless card to work, no matter what I try. [EDIT] As I mentioned in the post above, I fixed this. See page 13.[/EDIT] Also, I have an 'unknown device' in the device manager; its location is "on AMD ACPI-Compliant System," its device instance id is ACPI\HPQ0007\2&DABA3FF&0, and it has no compatible ids.
If anyone knows what this could be, or has any ideas how to fix the wireless, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you.

[EDIT] Just to keep everything in one place for all you googlers out there: I was having problems for a very long time with the sound still playing from the speakers after plugging in headphones. Thor17 gave this link on page 15 which finally solved this problem; in case either the forum or the link attached are down, the solution was to download the Smart Audio Conexant drivers (v 2.19.0.0) and force them to install through the update driver wizard. These drivers are linked to on the forum; I have also mirrored the file here.
I can confirm these work for my Pavilion dv9720us, and I suspect they work for other Pavilion dv9000 series notebooks as well.

 

That is built into XP. You need to go to Control panel>power options. Make sure the power is set to "portable/laptop" or "maxbattery" depending on your preference. Under the "advanced" tab check the "always shown the icon on the taskbar". There are some 3rd party apps that can adjust the look and feel of power management under XP, but I've never bothered.

WOW, what a thread! I'm looking into getting a HP DV6601 which looks very similar to the DV6500, same hardware anyway. Noticed there were no XP drivers, and I thought "oh no I don't want Vista running on a laptop". I have faith I'll get the thing running on XP now thanks to your useful thread Dave!

Anyone benchmark the differences between Vista and XP on their laptop? Hopefully I'll ad mine once I get it home in the next few days..

 

@ BlueRaja: Not sure if you have tried it but would still like to give the following link

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3647018&os=228&lang=en

 

It sure is nice of people to come in and make packages based off of other peoples work, post it somewhere, and give ZERO credit to where they got them (here), and then ask for "donations" on top of it all.... Truly the lowest scum of the internet users. Although, I'm sure it happens all the time. It's a real toss-up between this jacka$$ and the other guy pimping out his oh-so-great software that should do everything for you...

To answer your question, I did a google search for just the base ID's:
PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C

It came back with many hits, mostly Atheros WLAN drivers, I would give some of those a try and see how your luck goes.

 

Awesome guide.

Everything was working great for me, until I got to the audio.

Both my 'Conexant High Definition Audio' and 'HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP' have a yellow ! next to them and give me the error 10, cannot start the device.

I installed both the audio drivers and made the correct changes to the .inf's.

Here's my info

Code:

[Conexant]
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Waikiki5047.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5047&SUBSYS_103C30B2 ;Vega 1.0, 1.1
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Waikiki5047.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5047&SUBSYS_103C30A5 ;Titan/Altima, Thrifty
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Waikiki5047.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5047&SUBSYS_103C30A0 ;Jakarta 3
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Waikiki5047.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5047&SUBSYS_103C30CF 

My hardware ID's don't seem to match anyone else's who have posted with problems. They are ACPI\PNP0103 and *PNP0103.

Do I have to modify the .inf's differently?

I'm so lost and i've spent days on this now. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I haven't seen it mentioned here but http://www.pcidatabase.com/ is a great place to check hardware IDs.

 

@tes1234

I have not tested the Mic port on my system, so I can not say. I was able to record audio with the built in mic though, no problem. One thing with windows though, is you have to be very sure to setup all the volume / recording levels inputs & outputs when doing this type of thing.

For the time remaining items I had posted a similar question in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187333
There really wasn't much in the way of an HP driver/utility for WinXP to do what you seem to be looking for.
You might need to go third party for this type stuff.
As beyondtoo said, you are really stuck with the simple controls that come standard win WinXP.

Thank You.

I take it you have installed the UAA drivers successfully then if you have made it this far.
You could try to run the "Update driver" button for each device that is having troubles, and tell the wizard to search the internet. Others have reported this to work for them.

As far as Device ID "ACPI\PNP0103"
When I look on my system, that is just the device "High precision event timer", which I highly doubt has anything to do with your audio at all.
Can you post a screenshot of the device manager & the properties window for one of your non-working devices on the details tab with the "Device Instance Id" or the list of "Compatible Ids" selected from the drop down?

Thanks for the link, I will defiantly check it out!

 

This actually worked for me as well. It seems that without having Windows fully updated the drivers weren't able to install themselves correctly. I had tried using the driver mentioned above before installing SP2 and it didn't work, after installing SP2 and the above update (which is a safe file. i was a little nervous downloading a random .exe, but if anyone else needs to, its safe) everything worked fine.

My hardware ID's weren't showing up correctly either, which is why I posted those weird numbers before. I used the ID from you guide and that worked, just had to use a different driver since my model was different.

you may want to add something in your guide about fulling updating windows once you have your internet working.

now its on to figuring out why my USB ports are showing up as unknown devices.

 

Update: I was finally able to get my Wireless working (HP Pavilion dv9720us), using the ar5006-x xp-32 v.5.3.0.56 driver (there are newer versions, which didn't work for me..), found here. I hope this saves someone in the future from the frustration that I had to go through.

Now to fix the ACPI...

That update isn't available from Windows Update, or even from Microsoft's site. You need to download and install it manually.

 

Haha, what am I to say to that huh? If you really feel like I'm trying to steal credit for your "work", well, whatever man... (you don't really consider something so trivial as putting together a few drivers as work do you?) I put these files together along with instructions, hoping to help others. If you must know, I managed to locate most of the drivers on HP's business support forums, others I found on various other forums. There are no "inf edits" involved, these are all real drivers straight from the manufacturers, and HP. Don't believe me, download them and look for yourself, you won't find any of your crude "fixes" in these. (if you do download it, don't hesitate to donate a buck or two to cover the bandwidth... haha, j/k )

The donations link is for those who would like to express their gratitude, afterall the hosting isn't free, and the bandwidth on the large file adds up quick.

Judging by the emails I've received since putting the page up, it's proving to be a great help to those looking to get XP running on their notebooks.

Sure I could respond to your "scum of the internet" and "jacka$$" comments, but all that would do was make me appear to have as little class and integrity as you seem to have.

 

Discovered a new problem in my vista to xp migrated HP...The audio works fine otherwise, but when i plug in my headphones in any of the 2 hdphn jacks in the front, the sound comes from the headphones and the laptop speakers.
Any idea y this is happening?-any remedy?

 

I have a DV2745 PC, AMD/Nvidia
I installed all the drivers and have the following issues:

1) same as above - sound comes from both headphone jack and laptop speakers. I did try the solution posted here but it did not fix it.

2) I installed the 6.1, 6.3, and newly released 6.4 for the quicklaunch buttons. In Vista, when you press the mute key, it turned orange. Now, it niether mutes the speakers (related to problem #1) and it doesn't turn orange. Any solution? Version 6.4 is located here (FTP)
EDIT: I downloaded these drivers here and it fixes the issue as far as hitting the mute button actually mutes the speakers. however, the headphone jack issue and orange light issue is still not working.

3) The touchpad is not syanptics, but something called "Alps"? Anyone have an updated driver for this? I found a version 5.4.x.x on the hp site here (FTP)

 

Dave and all great work. Saved a lot of my time. Again I have a few issues left which are very critical for me.

1) Just like the previous two posts sound comes from both speakers and the headphone jack.

2) The mics dont work at all. Both in built mic and the external mic.

My configuration:

HP pavilion 6701AU. AMD Turion X2(preloaded with windows vista home)

Looking at the audio device I could figure out (VEN_14F1 DEV_5051 SUBSYS_103c3c0cf) that its a CX20561 Conexant HD-Audio SmartAudio 221(HERMOSA).

Unfortunately there are no XP drivers for this, If i try to install the VISTA drivers, the Conexant Audio Input and Audio Output disappear from the configuration.

Any help is appreciated. Otherwise looks like I have to revert to Vista again.

Thanks
Vijay

 

TheDave,

My notebook came with XP do all this still apply? and will HP help me as mine has XP on it all ready...Just want to format my drive and install a fresh copy

thanks! if not, all the information I need is right here I guess...i have a Dv9000 amd/nvidia system.

 

Hi, I hope I'm not asking a already fixed question (tried to get through this thread as best I could)

I have a dv6660se, and all the drivers are the same (says another source I found...) So, everything works (havn't tested remote yet) fine EXCEPT the sound. Quite odd too...

When ever I try to put anything into one of my 2 audio jacks, or my mic. jack the laptop will unmute and go to max volume, and stay there (as in i can't change it) untill I unplug the cord. (which I must say, at 1am with people in the next room, having Buckethead start blaring at max isn't appreciated).

Has anyone else had this problem?



-Edit-
I'm a dumbass, 2 posts above!

 

HELP! This problem is making my hair turn gray, and the hair that was already gray fall out!

I have a Pavilion 6500z that came with Vista aka Junk. I installed windows xp and thanks to Dave I have ALMOST everything running! Thanks for your help Dave.

But I have an Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g WiFi Adapter
(VEN_168C&DEV_001C&SUBSYS_137A103C&REV_01)
That is driving me absolutely INSANE. Does ANYONE have the drivers I need for it?

NVIDIA MCP67M
(VEN_10DE&DEV_0531&SUBSYS_30CF103C&REV_A2)
I can't get the video card installed either, and I've tried just about EVERYTHING.

I'll continue looking over this forum topic, though I think ive read every word 4 or 5 times.

SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!!!

Atheros Issue Fixed, if anyone else has an issue, let me know. I've got an .INF edited that will set the driver up and give you the option of installing for about 5 different types of cards.

I Still Need A Hand With The MCP67M (7150M)
I just cant seem to get anything to work?

 

JCanada, my 6609 has the same 7150m (MCP67M) graphics. Look at my page, and I've got the video driver there, as well as the instructions to get it installed. You'll have to get the whole package though, all the drivers are rared together. Let me know if it works!

http://www.kluneau.rchomepage.com/hpdrivers/

-Keith

 

Wow, those files worked great..You're a life saver, I was hating the thought of having to go back to vista, let alone i'd have to order the recovery disc to do it. The disc would've never arrived in time for my criminal justice bachelors degree orientation.

The Dave, you did nice work, but not all of it worked for my PC. If it weren't for this forum, I would've given up long ago!

Thanks Everyone!

 

Anyone find a solution to the sound problem?

 

I havent had any sort of sound problem, just edit the INF correctly.

View the 2nd post, and edit the INF similarly to that, but with your own device ID as it MAY be different. Assuming you have a conexant audio/modem device. I don't think any pavilions came with anything different around this time though.

 

The INF files were edited correctly. The problem is that putting in headphones, the speakers don't turn off, so you get sound through both the headphones and the speakers. additionally, pressing the qlb mute button mutes to "wave' sound but not master sound. see a few posts up, others have also reported this.

 

hi

I have taken hp dv6701au(amd) and v3402tx (intel).both are 160gb

by default i have hard drive as c:140 gb and d: recovery patition as around 15 gb.

now i was looking to have 3 partitions c: 40gb d:120gb e: as recovery 20gb.

need your input for how do we create partition without formatting the harddisk in actual.

in xp we use partition manager (a third party tool) where we resize the existing partition and later it becomes unallocated and then we create this as a new partition.

has anybody tried it on vista home premium?

or is there any other way to do it?

would b really grateful for ur inputs?

also if formatting is the last option have there been major hurdles and driver issues while re installation?

regards

navin

 

Excellent post!
It sure helped me a lot
Got a Pavilion dv9580ed up and running with XP now. Ethernet caused some trouble, but finally got it working by installing the nforce driver 12.15. Than installed for the ethernet te inf files from the 12.12 driver.

Only thing causes problems is the firewire (1394) Device cannot start (code 10). Anyone got a clue for me? Thanks in advance.

PS. When I got the 1394 working I'll write a dutch translation of this guide

 

Yeah, there's a built in disk manager just like with XP. To open it, click start, then right click "computer" and click manager, then select "disk management" in the list on the left.

As always, be careful when messing with partitions, and back up anything important first!

 

Glad it was able to help out

As for the 1394 Firewire, I am pretty sure it just worked in device manager after a clean XP/sp2 install. No extra drivers were needed. I did not test the device, but I am pretty sure that I am not getting a code 10 error.

My guess would be to type in the Hardware ID (PCI & VEN only needed usually) into google, and see what comes up. Good Luck!

 

A huge thanks from me.
I found a great deal on DV6652eo at almost half price... And recommended ordering a batch.
I didn't know it came with vista, which really don't like our servers, but thanks to this thread, I just saved the computers from just being stashed away somewhere

 

I was thinking about doing something like that. I'm actually a huge fan of DriverMax

Last week I bought a dv6625ep which is rather simillar to the 6645 mentioned here, and I was trying to downgrade it to XP, as well.
I stumbled upon many forae (plural for forum ) and got most of the drivers going with no problems. Except, of course, for the sound.
UAA installs ok, but both the audio driver and the modem driver (Conexant) aren't recognized. I read through this thread and found some useful tips. I'm going to give them a go today and, if I succeed, I'll make a .Zip (using DriverMax) and make it available.

That is: XP 32bit drivers for HP dv6625ep. Hope it works!
And thanks for making all the info available.

EDIT: forgot to mention, sound drivers are almost perfect! Buttons work, mute button goes orange, sound only comes from headphones when they're plugged in (and not also from speakers), volume and sound quality are both better then on Vista (go figure...), and the only "problem" is that the buttons no longer make that clicking sound they used to make in Vista... which I kind of enjoyed

Thanks again to all of you for sharing, it really helped me out a LOT!

 

First, I'd like to thank TheDave for posting this guide. It was a tremendous help when I recently downgraded my dv6605us from Vista to XP. Thanks!

For the most part, everything seems to be running smoothly. However, I'm having a problem with poor volume and background "hiss" when using either the internal or an external microphone. I never tested this while using Vista, so I'm unsure if this problem only occurs in XP or both XP and Vista. From what I understand, this is a known issue without a fix. The issue is documented here:

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service...47627+1203046330713+28353475&threadId=1103741

Does anyone here have this same problem? If so, did it happen after you downgraded, or was it also present in Vista?

Another thing I noticed is that CPU-Z might be reporting my mobo chipset incorrectly. Pilotas mentions a similar experience here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2794910&postcount=35

CPU-Z reports the following for my dv6605us:

Northbridge NVIDIA nForce 560 rev. A2
Southbridge NVIDIA nForce 560 rev. A2

However, retail specs for the dv6605us say that it uses the nForce 630M, and I found a few documents online that associate the Quanta 30CF mobo with the 630M. Also, Everest reports my video adapter string as GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M. Some people seem to be having good success with similar laptop models by using the following nVidia package:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_630a_winxp2k_14.10.html

This is a different package than the one TheDave recommends using, which is targetted for the nForce 560. It seems that some people were able to get the ethernet and SMBus installed without hacking any .inf files, by using the 630a package linked above. There's a discussion of that here:

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1172164

This makes sense if the chipset actually is the 630M rather than the 560 claimed by CPU-Z.

After downgrading I had the issue with audio coming through the speakers when I plugged in headphones, as mentioned previously in this thread. I noticed that windows update listed two optional updates for the Conexant audio and modem, so I installed those, which fixed the issue. However, I did examine the SoftPaq fix mentioned in this thread and noticed something odd. Here are the details of the SoftPaq that TheDave recommends for the initial driver installation:

sp35682.exe
TITLE: Conexant High Definition Audio
VERSION: 3.38.0.50 Rev. A
EFFECTIVE DATE: September 1, 2006

And here are the details of the SoftPaq that fixes the "plug-in-headphone-but-speaker-not-turn-off" issue:

sp34204.exe
TITLE: Conexant High Definition Audio
VERSION: 3.26.0.0 Rev. A
EFFECTIVE DATE: December 1, 2006

Notice that the first SP is a later version number, but was released 3 months before the second SP. Also, the later version doesn't fix the issue that the earlier version does. I'm not really a hardware kinda guy, but this just seems wrong somehow. What's up with that?

 

Here's something else I'm confused about. TheDave recommends using the following driver for the Broadcom WLAN:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-53245-1

I looked around on that site and found the following driver:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...swItem=ob-55706-1&lang=en&cc=us&idx=2&mode=4&

It seems to be a later revision of the same driver, but only mentions Microsoft Windows 2000. Does this mean we can't/shouldn't use it for XP? I poked around in the .inf file and found a section for x86 WinXP, so I'm guessing it would work for XP. If so, why is Windows 2000 the only OS they mention on the download page? I'm trying to make sense of this situation because if I decide to stick with XP then I'd like to know how to approach finding driver updates, rather than rely upon other people.

 

I fiddled around with my dv6625ep while it still had Vista, and even used the webcam and microphone with great results.

Having downgraded to XP, I managed to circumvent the audio problems by installing the Microsoft UAA patch and then the SP34200 (audio driver for Conexant). Went into a video conference with my girlfriend who told me that my microphone volume was a bit low in comparison to its performance with Vista. Adjusted audio settings and it was at least good enough to maintain a conversation. No remarks on hissing or static noise so far, I guess.

The only thing that makes me a bit restless is the chipset. My mobo is reported as a Quantum 30D0 with a 520 chipset, but as far as I remember I saw somewhere that it was a 620 chipset, in fact.
I used the nvidia driver mentioned by TheDave and everything works great, but memory and video benchmarks are kind of disappointing, I guess.
Not quite sure about the adequacy of this driver to my chipset...

 

Headphone problem is solved! Se this thread:

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1204621 http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1204621