For fear of looking like an idiot, let me state that I am and idiot. I thought that this was going to be easy, and I didn't pay close enough attention to what I was doing. And now I think I've killed this laptop.

I'm working with an HP Pavilion dv9700. When it came to me, it had Windows Vista on it, and the owner hated it. She asked me to Wipe Vista off, and dual boot it with Windows XP and Linux Ubuntu. I'm not going to bother with Ubuntu yet, because I'm waiting for Jaunty to come out in a few days. So, XP. I figured that it wouldn't be hard, Windows computer, Windows OS, just format the hard drive, install XP, update any necessary drivers, and I'd be done. But, because I've never had any problems with upgrading or downgrading a computer, I didn't think to look up or write down all the specs. Yes, I'm an idiot. So I wipe out Vista, install Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3. And now I have a laptop with no sound, no internet, no quick play buttons, and no image memory stick reader (the camera sticks). And that's just what I've found so far. The main one that's getting me right now is the internet. I don't know why it's not recognizing the hardware, but I don't know what kind of wired or wireless hardware is in the computer. So I'm not even sure what driver to try to install, or if there even is a driver that's compatible with XP. I think if I got her computer connected, I'd have better luck finding the drivers for the other devices. Any advice?

Greetings.

There are 202 different versions of HP Pavilion dv9700:

http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Lookup?h_la...Pavilion+dv9700

Find your exact model and hopefully it will have both XP and Vista drivers.

Hi jfinner1

Sounds like you know your way around PC's in general, despite the little hiccup.

You could try install a Linux distro instead of XP, and see if it will get you going.
Just so you can get data, hardware recognition etc.

Two choices, both with small footprints, I would suggest:

Puppy Linux
or
DSL

Did you wipe the entire HD? Including the Recovery partition?

Another possibility, would be to have HP ship a recovery CD.


Regards

Thanks for the replies. I decided to download Ubuntu Jaunty a few days early, and so far that's been working great. I have the two OSes dual booted right now, and I've been downloading the drivers through Ubuntu to install on XP. I'm still not sure if all the drivers are going to be available, and I still haven't figured out why the internet won't connect on XP. I'm gonna keep working on it for a few more days, see if I can figure it out. If not, I'll be getting the Vista recovery CD. I really hope it doesn't come to that, since the computer owner was very adamant about not wanting Vista anymore, but unfortunately, she needs some sort of Windows OS on the computer for work reasons. I'm sure I'll be posting more on here before I'm done, but I seem to be doing ok so far, lol. Thanks again.

Hi, I just downgraded my HP Pavilion dv9700 also. I had trouble finding drivers for the modem and others. I found alot of drivers online. I almost gave up on the internet and went home from work and plugged the internet up and now I have internet and everything. Until I plugged the internet cable in, the laptop wouldn't recognixe the modem. It worked for me, good luck. i am still looking for a few drivers, but with the internet working I will find the rest of them, it's whre to look next.