HP Pavillion dv6263cl/ Vista & XP

[brycematheson712]

Okay, yesterday, I went out and bought a new laptop. It's an HP Pavillion dv6263cl laptop. Here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.6GHz, 2MB L2, 2GB DDR2, 160GB 5400rpm SATA, SuperMulti 8x DVD±R/RW DL, 15.4" WXGA Brightview, 5-in-1 media reader, 10/100 NIC, 802.11a/b/g WLAN, Vista Home Premium

Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of Vista. I noticed it was going slow from the start, and with a Core 2 Duo CPU, I don't think it should be doing that.

Anyway, I want to get rid of it and put XP on it. However, it was designed for Windows Vista. When I go to the HP website, I notice there aren't hardly any XP drivers for it. Is there some way where I can install XP (I haven't done it yet), and if I do have driver problems use drivers from the Vista disk or ones I download from the website?

Thanks!

 

[azwebs]

Admittedly, I have a new laptop a couple of weeks ago, 2.6GHz, 3GB RAM - slower than a 15 year old PC. A normal installation of XP Professional takes about 3.7Gb space, a basic install of Vista takes 9.84Gb. I have also scrapped it and gone for alternatives.

The reason for the slowness and 'incompatibility' of Windows Vista with most PC and Laptops today is that XP Home/Professional takes up around 64mb (between 56-70mb) of your RAM, whereas Vista will take up 512Mb. You may still think this is incorrect, because you still have loads more RAM, but the thing is Windows Vista keeps sections of your RAM in a 'waiting' mode, meaning that it reserves space for startups and some of its system programs and services. For example, Vista Home Premium will use 512mb RAM by default, another 256mb for Windows Applications (can increase, drastically - depending on what you have installed), 256mb for start menu and documents loading, about 1GB for various tasks, and then there is also the RAM consumption of the various programs that are running at the time (these include background system services - the things in the tray in the bottom right). The Vista Sidebar gadget can take upto 512mb alone, depending on what widgets you have active. I recommend that if you are going to keep using Vista, go to the top of the sidebar and click add widget. Add the CPU meter, because then it tells you CPU and RAM usage, and you know exactly what is taxing, and what isn't (starting Vista is taxing on itself, because its got to load so much s**t).

I have found the following driver downloads for you. I shall list them here, and update the list as I find more. The links are direct to installers.

Synaptics Touchpad Driver for XP
HP QuickLaunch Buttons for XP
HP Wireless Assistant for XP
WinFlash on System Bios for XP

Hope these help for a start, but I'll need the make and model (part no if possible) of your audio adaptor card and your video card/graphics adaptor. Any preinstalled software will be lost during the new installation, but many of the bundled HP programs come on disks in the notebook box and the others are above. I do recommend the following two downloads for their superb protection quality.

AdAware SE Personal Edition - LavaSoft for XP
SpyBot Search and Destroy - LavaSoft for XP

I can't really get you any more until I know the make and model of your audio and video card/graphics card. Hope these help for now, and if you've got any questions, please email me on [email protected]