Cannot find BIOS or video card update for hp pavilion dv6646.

Hello.

So I got a HP Pavilion dv6646us from a friend. His wife had spilled coffee on it and I took it off their hands. I knew nothing about fixing laptops or computers, but it didn't appear to have much water damage except for the HD, and it looked like a decent laptop, so I took a chance.

When I turned it on, black screen says no OS, so starting from absolute square one, I obtained a windows xp os cd to replace the vista os which originally came with the laptop because I've heard so many negative things about vista. And xp works a lot better on the online game I play. Three days later, I had to get a new HD(SATA) and got it back to working along with all the drives except the video and audio cards.

At the moment, I'm mostly concerned about the video card because the online game I play doesn't run without the video card. Eventually though, I'd like to watch videos and DVDs on it.

The laptop does detect a video card and audio device, and I've tried everything to update the Nvidia graphics card -- I checked in the Nvidia site, HP site, random sites like these and downloaded and tried as much as I could in the the last two days, but none of them were a compatible update for it. I was also told I may need to update my BIOS because it was a clean install, but I ran into the same problem as my search for the video update. I'm just wondering if I missed a step or did something out of order.

I'm also keeping in mind it could simply be shot from the coffee, but I was told it was unlikely because of the condition it was in when I first obtained it.

Thanks ahead of time.

 

The newest BIOS for the dv6646us notebook is currently version F.31 and can be downloaded here - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3552675&os=228&lang=en. The BIOS update is not a required one, but it is strongly recommended that you update to this version.

According to the product specifications, you have an NVIDIA GeForce 7150M graphics card in the notebook. NVIDIA had just recently added drivers for the GeForce 7 mobile series on their website, and version 179.48 is the one you want - http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winxp_179.48_beta.html.

As for the audio device, it's a little harder to find a driver for that but the name of it should be "Conexant HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP." Windows Update should hopefully be able to find a driver for you; if not, just search for it on the Internet.

 

Try also updating/reinstalling the chipset driver.

cheers ...

 

Thanks Justin for the info. My friend actually suggested me to go to Softpedia for the video card, but your suggestion for the BIOS flash worked. Thanks again for that.

However, I don't think there is a Conexant audio device for windows xp -- if there is, I can't find a match. I did accidently install the vista version and it did show up in systems, but obviously it didn't work. I have installed/updated my chipset driver. So, the search continues...

 

Heh...oops - it seems that the Conexant audio device I posted above is actually one Conexant's modem devices.

Since HP hasn't officially posted Conexant HD Audio drivers for Windows XP, finding compatible drivers are difficult. I dug up a couple you might want to try. If they don't seem to work, uninstall them.

SP35682 (NEWER) - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=228&product=3195733

SP34386 - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=228&product=3195733

 

Finally got my sound! Thanks for letting me know about Conexant. I'd have never even figured that out myself. I forced/manually installed it through Sound, Video, and Game controllers, and since I exhausted my search in HP, I went to Windows they they had it! So simple, yet not...

Thanks so much, Justin~