I headed to the HP support site and looked up my model: HP Pavilion Elite PC m9360f and ended up on this page. One of the devices I was looking to find drivers for seemed to be a Lite-On Wireless Network Adapter which I found in the list of drivers available for download. I went ahead and downloaded it and tried to run it but got a dialog that said:

Your system does not meet the minimum requirements for this update. Update has been cancelled. (9998)

I had a feeling this was more of an incompatibility with Win7 than really not meeting the minimum requirements. I ended up figuring out a way around it which basically consisted of the following steps (which seem to work for at least several of the drivers available):

1. Launch the update program’s executable file (e.g., sp37473.exe).
2. Eventually, you’ll see the message I mentioned above but don’t close that dialog.
3. Open up Windows Explorer
4. Type ‘%temp%’ in the address bar to switch over to your temporary files directory.
5. Sort the view by “Last Modified Date” and look for the folder that was most recently modified (for me the folder names seem to be consistently named “pft____.tmp” where the underscores are some random string).
6. Go into the folder, and then again into the folder with the actual driver files (usually named ‘src’ or ‘source’, etc.).
7. Copy the full path to that folder to your clipboard.
8. Head over to the Device Manager and right click on the device you’re trying to install drivers for.
9. Select “Update Driver Software…”
10. Click on the “Browse my computer for driver software” button.
11. Paste the path to the folder with the driver files into the text box/drop down list.
12. Make sure the “Include subfolders” checkbox is checked (some of these seemed to have several levels of nested folders).
13. Click on Next.

If you managed to find the right package to download that corresponds to the device you’re trying to fix, things should install easily at this point and the device should no longer be in the “Other devices” node. If you didn’t, you’ve got some more searching to do and it potentially might not just be on the HP site.

If you’re clueless as to what the device might be, what’s worked best for me is to the the “Hardware Ids” property from the device in need of some driver-love (it’s a string that looks like this: “PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0781&SUBSYS_760011AD&REV_00″) and search the web for it. Chances are you’ll find some clues that will lead you to the right place.

In my case, here are the two device hardware IDs (Found in the Details tab in the device’s property pages) I had to find with links to the drivers I ended up using:

• PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0781&SUBSYS_760011AD&REV_00:
  • Lite-On Technology/Ralink Wireless driver download page
• PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2930&SUBSYS_2A6F103C&REV_02:
  • Intel ICH9 Family SMBus Controller - 2930 driver

Once I installed these two drivers, my Device Manager was no longer showing any unidentified drivers so the job was done. Hope this helps someone else someday…

First, I installed on my MacBook Pro via BootCamp. I actually performed an “Upgrade” instead of a “Clean Install” on that one and it went smoothly requiring no steps following the install–everything just worked.

Next I tried my oldest machine, a Compaq laptop which Vista just wasn’t usable on. It also installed smoothly and all devices worked after a quick trip to Windows Update.

I then went on to install on our next laptop: a Toshiba Satellite M45-S355. The install went well once again but, even after a trip to Windows Update, I still didn’t have my WiFi adapter working. So I set off on several searches for wireless drivers and came up empty for about an hour. Just when I was about to give up, I found this site. It seems Toshiba doesn’t have Vista drivers listed at all for this machine on their U.S. site but I did find them on their Europe site. Posting this in case anyone else runs into the same problems hoping that this saves them the time and frustration I just experienced. Anyway, I ended up using the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Vista 32 drivers (direct link) and everything’s all happy now.

Update: I also noticed I had a “Mass Storage” device without drivers. From the same site, I downloaded the Texas Instruments Flash Media Driver and it also installed successfully. All devices seem to be covered now.

Given how I’ve ended up referring to my past posts about new machines countless times, I figured I’d continue that tradition to write a post about the new machine along with the relevant links I used to get drivers, etc. It’s also kind of interesting to see how much things have changed over the years. Anyway, here goes:

• HP Pavilion Elite PC m9360f (drivers)
• Intel Core2 Quad Processor Q9300 2.50GHz, 6MB L2 cache, 1333MHz FSB
• 8GB RAM
• 1TB Hard Drive
• Bluray Player & SuperMulti DVD Burner (w/Lightscribe)
• NVidia GeForce 9800GT (driver)
• Hauppage TV Tuner
• Realtek LAN Adapter (driver)
• Ralink/Lite-On Wireless Network Adapter (driver)
  • The one labeled “PCI/mPCI/CB(RT2760/RT2790/RT2860/RT2890)” worked for me.
• 15-in-1 Memory Card Reader
• Firewire/USB 2.0

The first thing I always do is format the box and reinstall a clean version of the OS–in this case I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit. This turned out to be a much better experience than I had last time when trying to find all the necessary drivers that don’t already come with the OS. Unfortunately, the LAN adapter is one that doesn’t work automatically following a vanilla install of Vista. I downloaded (link is above) on a separate computer, put it on a USB key, and installed it. Once that was working, downloading the other few drivers was pretty quick.

I’ll update this post as I find anything else that may be relevant and/or helpful for folks (including myself) trying to install Vista on this box from scratch.

I got a Rosewill power supply for it and ended up plugging it into the motherboard incorrectly which led to a fried motherboard. Fun. It took a while to make the call though to say it was officially dead. I’m fairly experienced on the software side but not so much on the hardware front. In the end, I decided to build or purchase a new machine as it was due for an upgrade anyway. I looked around on NewEgg for a while–an amazing and highly recommended site for computer equipment–and gave up on the building idea after a bit because I just had had enough of it for now. In the end, my wife came up with the idea of checking out our local Fry’s store to see what they had already built.  

I ended up buying an HP Pavilion m7690n. It’s a nice system overall and at a great price, even compared to what I gathered during my brief search targeting at building it myself again.

Unfortunately, this didn’t mark the end of my troubles. The HP came with Windows Media Center pre-installed. They don’t provide the actual installation discs, instead, they provide an application that allows you to create a set of recovery discs yourself. The problem is that I’m guessing those are using some sort of reimaging system and not the actual Windows install process. I really wanted to wipe it completely though as it came with a ton of software on it that’s basically crap plus I wanted to make the machine a part of my domain-based network. I found a way to trick MCE into allowing it to join a domain (MCE 2005 by default disables this feature) that looked fairly straightforward. So I figured I’d try it and manually uninstall the plethora of unwanted software on the machine so I could keep a clean install of Media Center on the machine but have it join the domain. This is where things got a bit more complicated.

Tricking it into joining a domain required using a Windows install CD to go into the ‘recovery console’. So I got an old XP setup disc and gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I’d blue screen after a couple of minutes or so. The blue screen (Windows STOP) error was:

STOP: 0x0000007b (0xF78D2524, 0xc0000034, 0×00000000, 0×00000000)

I found a few sites that talked about this blue screen here (search for 0x0000007b) and here. These helped a bit but weren’t really addressing the actual problem I was experiencing in the end. I then was talking to a friend of mine (thanks Dan!) who said he had experienced a similar problem last time he build a machine with SATA discs and suggested I find the drivers for mine (found here for future reference), put them on a floppy, and do the F6 thing during Windows Setup to provide it the appropriate drivers to work with my drives. I ended up taking his advice but since my machine doesn’t have a floppy it meant I had to dig up my old 120mhz Pentium from way back (I knew there was a reason why I keep my old machines), stripped the 3.5″ floppy from it and connected it to my new machine. After a while, I finally got it to work just fine though it was pretty frustrating overall.

I even spoke to (chatted online actually) HP’s support at 4am the first night to see if they had seen this problem before but it proved to be futile. They told me they didn’t recommend (or support actually) “upgrading the OS” on their machines and instead I should use what came on it. He was nice though and tried to help but all he could suggest was to “FDISK the machine” as that will probably “fix it.” So this is why I’m posting this to maybe save a few hours of frustration for anyone who goes out and buys an m7690n and finds they need to hit the good old recovery console.

On the bright side, I did try Vista on the new machine and it worked fantastically well (install went smooth as can be). It’s the first time all of it’s performance scores were five or higher. I didn’t leave it on as I only have Vista RC2 discs at home and one of the applications I use a lot (Steinberg Cubase and an MI4 sound card) don’t yet work on Vista well so I needed XP.

The rest of this post is primarily for me (and anyone else in this situation) for future reference so I don’t have to spend as much time finding the correct links for drivers, etc.

HP Pavilion m7690n Specs
ASUS P5BW-LA (Basswood) Motherboard Specs
Intel Raid/ACHI Drivers
Realtek HD Audio Drivers
Intel 92562V 10/100 Network Drivers (wired)
NVidia GeForce 7600 GT Graphics Drivers
Lite-On (Atheros) Wireless Network Driver (still searching)

I’ll update this post as I find more relevant information as I’ve learned from experience that I’ll be needing to come back to this post (as I did last time I posted about my new machine) on many occasions.