Can you downgrade a HP Pavilion?

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merrimackjay

Member
Jun 27, 2003
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Hello,

I have my girlfriend's HP Pavilion XE783 here that I am trying to fix for her. It was just running way too slow so I wanted to reformat the hard drive and install Win98SE (it came with WinME, which we both hate).

Well, reformatting was no problem, and installing Win98SE was no problem. Now the problem I am having is that it did not recognize the Video Card, Sound Card, Modem, or Ethernet Card. I found her "System Recovery" cds and the third disk supposedly has all the drivers on it. Well, first of all the recovery program wouldn't run, because "This recovery disk is only designed to work for an HP Pavilion PC". Fine. Going through the Device Manager however, I was able to update the video drivers just fine. Rebooted and the video drivers are working great. But for everything else it says "Windows was unable to locate a driver for this device" when I try to point the Ethernet Card, Modem, or Sound Card to their appropriate drivers on the cd.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Is it possible her sound card, ethernet card, and modem ONLY work with WinME and won't work on Win98? If not, where can I get drivers for them since it won't take the ones on the recovery cd?

Any help would be very appreciated.
 
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brianp34

Golden Member
Sep 9, 2001
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0
76
Have you tried HP's website? Most of the OEM's provide drivers for almost everything. Also, if you can identify the hardware by make and model you can probably use drivers from the hardware manufacturer.
 
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brianp34

Golden Member
Sep 9, 2001
1,731
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76
Is it possible her sound card, ethernet card, and modem ONLY work with WinME and won't work on Win98? If not, where can I get drivers for them since it won't take the ones on the recovery cd?
Click to expand...

Oh, and that's very unlikely.
 
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compudog

Diamond Member
Apr 25, 2001
5,782
0
71
On an HP, there is a seperate, hidden partition for system recovery. Unless you know for certain you deleted the hidden partition, press F10 at boot and go through the HP recovery thing. It will return the PC to it's shipping state. At that point, install Windows XP. HP does <U>indeed</U> have hardware in their PCs that will ONLY work with the OS they were shipped with. Typically you can go forward (upgrade) but not back. The drivers that shippied with the Pavilion were designed for ME (rubbish) and won't work with Win9x, but the devices may work with XP.
 
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redbeard1

Diamond Member
Dec 12, 2001
3,006
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0
Hp seems to be dropping more and more drivers from older products support pages. This link may give you some help in finding some info on the various parts. The network card doesn't seem to have came with the system originally, so you'll probably have to open it up and look at it to find out for sure. It's seems like you'll end up having to do that with the remaining parts.

HP
 
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brianp34

Golden Member
Sep 9, 2001
1,731
0
76
HPdoes indeed have hardware in their PCs that will ONLY work with the OS they were shipped with
Click to expand...

I never would have guessed that (all my oem's have been gateway's or compaqs.) Thanks for clearing that up so this fella didn't follow my bad advice above.
 
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merrimackjay

Member
Jun 27, 2003
80
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0
Wow. That reallys sucks about HP using hardware that isnt backwards compatible. Well on the bright side, it doesn't matter if I can get her modem to work or not, and her ethernet card was indeed purchased separately so I should be able to find drivers for that once I open up the thing and see what kind of card it is.

That leaves the sound card, which hopefully I'll be able to find drivers for once I open up the machine and check it out.

And redbeard, that was the exact correct link... how'd you know she had the walmart holiday bundle?
 
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