HOW TO Downgrade your Laptop from Vista to XP Professional - Part Two

..continued from "HOW TO Downgrade your Laptop from Vista to XP Professional - Part One"...

May 2013 Update: Seems some of the links listed below are broken. Go to http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&os=228&product=3177516&sw_lang=& to download all the drivers for this family of laptops (Presario V6000 series)

Ah.. we've finally managed to sneak XP into a system pre-installed with vista. And now the microsoft guys come back with a vengeance.. in the form of missing drivers. This is where the REAL problems start... locating all the myriad drivers that your laptop needs. I scoured the net for such walk-throughs, and failed.. almost everyone has managed to falter over here. Someone couldn't get the sound to work, others couldn't fix the screen, the list goes on. By lots of trial-and-error, after about 3 days & 300 mbs of downloaded drivers, i was finally able to get all the drivers required by my laptop. Most are specific components needing a particular type of driver available only with the laptop-manufacturer. So, this Part 2 is brand-specific: since i own a HP Compaq Presario, the drivers mentioned below are hp-specific. But even if you own a different brand, read through this to get an idea of what stuff you need to gather before the big downgrade.

HP Laptop: Compaq Presario V6450 / V6xxx XP Drivers
These are the drivers that hp SHOULD be giving in a cd or something alongwith every laptop. If you wipe-out your laptop's hard disk (vista makes that necessary!) and install XP professional, These are most of the drivers you'll be needing to install to get your system started. And just to make things interesting, HP doesn't list these in most laptops' driver-downloads page, nor does it give the exact names of its internal devices like network cards or card readers.

Before we start, A few things to remember: during drivers-installation, if the 'Found New harware Wizard' pops up anytime, just ignore it completely! If it lasts till after the driver's installation, just hit cancel.
And almost every driver you install will require for windows to be restarted. Do it, don't whine. Remove any boot cd from your drive (which will be there if you just installed XP!) And when downloading the setup files from the net, put in the driver's name in the Save As box, otherwise you'll get confused which file is for what. (since they're all named like SPxxxx.exe)



1. CHIPSET
First: I needed to know exactly what intel-chipset (read:motherboard!) I had. For this, intel's website has this nice little file: intel chipset identification ultility : ChipUtil.exe
You can get it from here

On my notebook, it detected: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Chipsets or Intel(R) 945GT Express Chipset
And gave a link to get the required graphics & chipset drivers:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022034.htm
Download the appropriate graphics & chipset driver files from the table given.

I first installed the graphics driver & restarted. It corrected the resolution from a flattened-out 800x600 to the proper 1280x800.
Then the chipset driver. It didn't do anything noticeable, but then I opened the device manager & saw that many of the 'unkown device's had been identified… unfortunately that still didn't include the sound & ethernet/network adapter!

Side Note:
This is the WAY to get your needed drivers from the net: Right-click My Computer icon (from windows explorer if not from desktop) > Properties > Hardware tab > Device Manager > in the top menu, View > Devices by Connection > now right-click any yellow or weird-looking entry and choose Update Driver > In the update-wizard-window, choose "yes, this time only" > Press Next > Cross your fingers!!

Windows can update a faulty part's drivers straight from the net, but for that first I needed a working network adapter!
...getting back to drivers list...

2. NETWORK
Intel PRO 100 Network Adapter Driver , file was named sp33645.exe

Now, since I had an internet connection at home, once i got the network adapter installed & net connected, just right-clicking some of the 'unknown device's & saying 'update driver' did the trick. But since all of us can't have the net handy when we need it the most, i'm gonna show how to do this by way of manual downloads only.

Wireless network: Intel PRO/wireless drivers , the file was named sp36414.exe

Bluetooth:
Software and drivers for HP Integrated Module with Bluetooth Wireless , filename: sp32883.exe

HP Wireless Assistant : file was named sp35333.exe

3. AUDIO:
this has to be done in 3 steps:
First, install Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver , file name sp33867.exe

(once you put this in, 2 new harware-detects will occur: Audio device on high definition bus, then Modem device on high definition bus. Gotta get 2 more drivers!

Audio: Conexant High Definition Audio Driver , file was named sp34204.exe (note, there's several conexant drivers all over the HP site, and only this 1 worked for me.)

After rebooting, voila what do u know, the sound WORKS!! who knows why they still need that modem thingy but hey, i don't make them..

Modem device: Conexant HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP , file was named sp33890.exe


4. THE SPECIAL DEVICES
At last, we put in the drivers for touchpad (need that? the mouse touchpad's working nicely from start!), card-reader, buttons etc

touchpad: Synaptics Touchpad , file was named sp35444.exe


card reader: Ricoh 5-in-1 Card Reader Driver , file was named sp33604.exe


hp quick launch buttons , file was sp34796.exe


..& that's it!

ALL these drivers, excluding the chipset which you should take from the chipmakers site only, I found listed over here:
Software & Driver downloads, Compaq Presario V6000T CTO Notebook PC

(Although not exactly my laptop-model, only this page has a list of practically all the drivers any presario v6xxx model & some others may need. If only i'd found this page sooner!)

Here's a quick top-to-bottom-list of all the drivers on this page that were usefull specifically for my Compaq Presario 6450EE:

- Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver for High Definition Audio (sp32646)
- Conexant High Definition Audio Driver
- HP Quick Launch Buttons (use latest 1 only)
- Synaptics Touchpad
- Conexant HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP
- Intel PRO/Wireless Drivers
- HP Wireless Assistant (many listed, just try latest-one-first..)
- Intel PRO 100 Network Adapter Driver
- Ricoh 5-in-1 Card Reader Driver
- Software and Drivers for HP Integrated Module with Bluetooth Wireless
- Wireless Home Network Setup (needed if you're going to use laptop in wireless network)

So, go ahead & get rid of that annoyingly incompatible vista, we CAN downgrade even a pre-installed laptop to XP.