Hello all,
There has been much hubub on the net about drivers and installing XP on HP's that come preloaded (ie dead-on-arrival) with Vista.
I want to share my experience so others have the confidence to go thru with downgrading if they have a similar HP model. I am by no means a techie and kinda walked blindly into attempting this. I have a dv9417ca (dual AMD TL-56).
First off, I formatted my ENTIRE hardrive using the bootable XP CD BEFORE I wrote down my list of hardware from device manager in Vista. Also, I did not create any recovery disks should I need to reinstall Vista. "I am such a newb," I thought. Should've read those forums first. I thought I was really screwed after reading all the driver nightmares on the web.
So do not insert your beloved XP CD before you've made your hardware list and recovery disks (follow HP software instructions).
Contrary to most people, I had no problems with disabling SATA native support in the BIOS to get the XP setup to run (there is lots of documentation on this elsewhere on the web). I proceeded to install XP on C: but the setup would keep looping after reboot, never reaching the part of the XP installation where you get to use the mouse, set computer name, etc.
I formatted C: again, and after that reboot, the HP BIOS would try to boot from drive D:, the location of the Recovery partition I had mistakenly wiped. After not finding it, it would keep rebooting in an endless cycle. Weird. It did not let me install XP.
This was the low point of my adventure. UPDATE: To avoid this problem I would recommend completely wiping your drive hardcore-style with a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot & Nuke). Burn an ISO from the following link:
https://www.washington.edu/uware/dban/
(Yes, this is version 1.06, not the latest version but works faster than version 1.0.7)
Of course, backup ALL your data as there is no going back. Boot from the CD you just burned. Select "Quick" mode. "Quick" is relative - it will still take about 2 hours on a 160 GB drive, but it does the job properly. Proceed to install XP on the completely blanked drive.
So I decided to install XP on drive D. Maybe flashing a new BIOS would've let me install on any partition I wanted, but I didn't do this. I'm gonna install Linux on drive C later, anyways.
The install went smoothly.
Next, I went to hp.com to search for drivers for my dv9417. There was next to nothing! I was kinda scared.
After browsing some more forums, I decided to download and install all the generic drivers listed for the dv9000 series located here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189〈=en
They worked!!! 
I installed the NVIDIA graphics driver first, then the NVIDIA chipset driver for network capabilities, Broadcom driver for WiFi, Microsoft Audio Architecture Bus BEFORE the Conexant Audio Driver...it went so smoothly I though I was dreaming. I now have successfully "upgraded" to XP Pro. Yay.
In my device manager, however, there are two yellow exclamation marks left, simply listed as unknown PCI Devices. I wonder what they are...but everything seems to be working so I dunno.
So if you have a dv6000 series, I recommend going to hp.com support and searching for dv6000 CTO drivers (generic). They will most likely work, as they did with me. Select dv6000t for Intel chipsets and dv6000z for AMD chipsets.
And remember, if you write down all your devices from Vista you won't have any left-over "yellow exclamation" devices in your device manager because you'll know what they are and you'll go and get drivers for them, right?
Good luck everyone - the internet community really pulls thru when you need it.
There has been much hubub on the net about drivers and installing XP on HP's that come preloaded (ie dead-on-arrival) with Vista.
I want to share my experience so others have the confidence to go thru with downgrading if they have a similar HP model. I am by no means a techie and kinda walked blindly into attempting this. I have a dv9417ca (dual AMD TL-56).
First off, I formatted my ENTIRE hardrive using the bootable XP CD BEFORE I wrote down my list of hardware from device manager in Vista. Also, I did not create any recovery disks should I need to reinstall Vista. "I am such a newb," I thought. Should've read those forums first. I thought I was really screwed after reading all the driver nightmares on the web.
So do not insert your beloved XP CD before you've made your hardware list and recovery disks (follow HP software instructions).
Contrary to most people, I had no problems with disabling SATA native support in the BIOS to get the XP setup to run (there is lots of documentation on this elsewhere on the web). I proceeded to install XP on C: but the setup would keep looping after reboot, never reaching the part of the XP installation where you get to use the mouse, set computer name, etc.
I formatted C: again, and after that reboot, the HP BIOS would try to boot from drive D:, the location of the Recovery partition I had mistakenly wiped. After not finding it, it would keep rebooting in an endless cycle. Weird. It did not let me install XP.
This was the low point of my adventure. UPDATE: To avoid this problem I would recommend completely wiping your drive hardcore-style with a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot & Nuke). Burn an ISO from the following link:
https://www.washington.edu/uware/dban/
(Yes, this is version 1.06, not the latest version but works faster than version 1.0.7)
Of course, backup ALL your data as there is no going back. Boot from the CD you just burned. Select "Quick" mode. "Quick" is relative - it will still take about 2 hours on a 160 GB drive, but it does the job properly. Proceed to install XP on the completely blanked drive.
So I decided to install XP on drive D. Maybe flashing a new BIOS would've let me install on any partition I wanted, but I didn't do this. I'm gonna install Linux on drive C later, anyways.
The install went smoothly.
Next, I went to hp.com to search for drivers for my dv9417. There was next to nothing! I was kinda scared.
After browsing some more forums, I decided to download and install all the generic drivers listed for the dv9000 series located here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189〈=en
They worked!!! I installed the NVIDIA graphics driver first, then the NVIDIA chipset driver for network capabilities, Broadcom driver for WiFi, Microsoft Audio Architecture Bus BEFORE the Conexant Audio Driver...it went so smoothly I though I was dreaming. I now have successfully "upgraded" to XP Pro. Yay.
In my device manager, however, there are two yellow exclamation marks left, simply listed as unknown PCI Devices. I wonder what they are...but everything seems to be working so I dunno.
So if you have a dv6000 series, I recommend going to hp.com support and searching for dv6000 CTO drivers (generic). They will most likely work, as they did with me. Select dv6000t for Intel chipsets and dv6000z for AMD chipsets.
And remember, if you write down all your devices from Vista you won't have any left-over "yellow exclamation" devices in your device manager because you'll know what they are and you'll go and get drivers for them, right?
Good luck everyone - the internet community really pulls thru when you need it.
