I just bought a Compaq laptop (model number C795TU). I installed Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 2) on it. The problem is that a lot of stuff isn't working - the audio device is not detected, neither the Ethernet card and wireless card. Video is displayed, but using the default VGA driver from Microsoft, not the one required for this. It's a widescreen laptop, but the maximum the standard resolution the VGA driver can take is 1024x768, instead of the proper widescreen ratio it should take.
The hardware is not faulty, because I ran a live session of Ubuntu 8.04, and it detected and worked with all the malfunctioning devices. I'm comfortable with using Linux, but my dad is going to be using this and he wants Windows, so installing Ubuntu won't help.
So I went to the HP website to look up the drivers for this model. Here's the page: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=in&lang=en&os=228&product=3739763&
Now, if you click on the link for Windows XP - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=in&lang=en&product=3739763 - you'll see that none of the drivers I require - audio, video, wireless, Ethernet - are listed. Only the storage solution driver from Intel, which I don't need because it's working fine. The others which are there are useless - because I don't want to update HP QuickLaunch buttons - this model doesn't have them.
However, if you go to the page for Vista - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=in&lang=en&product=3739763 - you'll find that all the drivers are listed - Conexant HD Audio, Atheros Wirless, Realtek Ethernet, Intel Video - etc.
My question is, can these drivers (specified to be for Vista), be used safely with XP? If not, then what should I do? I checked for the drivers separately too - like at Intel's downloadcenter.intel.com for the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset, but found none for XP.
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