I partitioned my HP Pavilion laptop hard drive that came with Vista according to the how-to directions. The Vista partition is running fine but there are missing device drivers on the XP side. Is there a way to reconnect to the missing drivers? I've tried all of the wizards that XP provides and no luck. The internet/network driver is one of the ones missing so I do not have internet access through windows xp.
How-To Geek Forums » Windows XP
missing device drivers after Vista/XP partition
(38 posts)
I just looked at the HP Pavilion dv9727 support page, I found that there are no official Windows XP network drivers and nothing the says a chipset that laptop uses for networking.
Now you will have to check some things on your machine to find out what networking chipset your laptop uses.
First check in Device Manager in Vista, here is how:
Start the start button (or Vista Orb as Microsoft calls it).
Right click on Computer and click Manage.
Click Continue.
Click Device Manager on the left.
Double click on Network adapters.
Type the entries the appear under Network adapters in a reply.
That is good information as it's should be easy to find drivers for Atheros and NVidia cards.
Unfortunately it's not specific enough and as I don't know of a way to get that information that is builtin to Windows you will have to install a third party program to get more info.
Here is how to do that:
1. Download Everest Ultimate from http://www.download.com/Everes.....99291.html
It's a 30 trial version but since we just need to for a few minutes that shouldn't be a problem.
2. Install Everest and run the program.
3. On the left click network.
4. Click "PCI / PnP Network".
5. Reply with what that list shows.
The initial startup of Everest Ultimate gave me a warning that the current version I just downloaded does not fully support my system which seems to have nVidia "MCP67/MCP86" motherboard chipset. However, under the PCI/PnP Network folder is the following:
Atheros AR5006X Wireless Network Adapter..........................PCI
NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller [10DE-054C][NoDB].............PCI
You can try downloading Everest from http://www.techpowerup.com/dow.....ckage.html
I think the download.com link I gave above had an old version, sorry about that.
On the wireless card I just did a search for it on Google and found the page http://www.atheros.cz/download.....8;system=1
I'm not sure but it looks like that driver should work.
Just click that link, click Download, wait 15 seconds and the driver will download.
So far I've looked and found from NVIDIA's web site they say to get drivers from the machine manufacturer. Not very helpful in this case.
I found from search that someone said the driver at http://www.nvidia.com/object/n....._9.53.html works.
I have no idea if it would work as I don't have your model of laptop.
It's the only driver I could find at the moment that seems like a plausible match though.
I looked on the page I found again and it appears I the page I should have linked to was at http://www.nvidia.com/object/n.....14.10.html
If that one doesn't work you can try looking in Everest Ultimate again:
Click Motherboard on the left.
Click Motherboard on the right.
Reply with the values of Motherboard ID, Motherboard Name and Motherboard chipset.
Unfortunately at this point I think there is a good possibility that it's a chipset where the drivers are only provided by the laptop manufacturer only and thus with no manufacturer drivers your out of luck.
Success!! This driver seemed to do the trick and now I'm able to connect to the internet - thanks!!
Unfortunately I'm still missing some other drivers and some functions on the laptop like the DVD drive, sound device, and function keys (on the XP side). Here's a list of drivers that are missing (labeled with yellow question mark)from the device manager list:
Other devices:
Base System Device
Base System Device
Base System Device
Ethernet Controller
PCI Device
Unknown Device
Video Controller (VGA Compatible)
I've already ran through all the wizards and updates I could think of now that I'm connected to the internet and it's still not quite right. Any advice on how to find/repair this missing info would be appreciated.
Cool. Glad to see that worked.
I found the link for that nForce driver at http://komku.blogspot.com/2007.....-4520.html
So maybe these other links from that page will work too:
169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe - Video Driver (For the VGA Controller)
Atheros Windows XP driver - Wireless Driver (For the remaining Ethernet Controller)
For the wireless you could try what I had posted before:
Go to the page at http://www.atheros.cz/download.....8;system=1
Click the download button in the first box.
Wait 15 seconds and the driver will start downloading.
For the video card (What device manager lists as "VGAS Controller):
Open Everest on Vista.
Click Display on the left.
Click GPU.
Post back what it says under Device Description and Video Adapter.
You can try the driver at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/.....opic=16154
You need to follow the instructions to use it at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/.....owtopic=33 as it is a little more complicated to download and install then just downloading the driver from the page above.
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