thefrozencoder

Programming and Technology blog

Windows 7 on my HP EliteBook 8530p

7. August 2009 thefrozencoder General, Hardware (1)

I was able to install Windows 7 Professional (x64) on my Dev laptop today.  It didn’t take that long to install and once up and running I had 6 Unknown Devices present in the Device Manager.  All I had to do for 4 of them was right click on the device and Update Driver from internet.  Windows Update recognized the 4 devices and downloaded drivers for them.  This is a list of the drivers that had to be downloaded or installed manually:

  • Ricoh Memory Stick Host Controller (driver downloaded from windows update)
  • Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller (driver downloaded from windows update)
  • Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller (driver downloaded from windows update)
  • AuthenTec Inc. AES2810 (Finger print sensor) (driver downloaded from windows update)
  • HP Drive Guard Driver (download HP 3D Driveguard (Vista) softpaq sp39410.exe)
  • Direct Application Launch Button (download HP Quick Launch Buttons (softpaq sp43616.exe))

Once the drivers where updated manually I noticed that I had 4 new Windows Updates to download all of which were the following drivers:

  • A newer AuthenTec Inc. AES2810 driver
  • A newer ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 driver
  • A newer Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection driver
  • A newer Agere Systems HDA Modem driver

All in all a pretty clean and simple install.  That probably more so because the the hardware is fairly new.

The only thing that does not work properly is the mute button (part of the quick launch buttons).  Not a big deal I will probably just have to update the software when HP updates its library for Win7 in October.  Other than I am really liking Win7 so far on this laptop, it runs very well alongside the 8GB of RAM I have installed.

Update: 2009-08-08 - Seems I was wrong about the mute button it does work, however it does not register to Windows that the mute button is enabled so Windows does not display the little red disabled symbol on the speaker icon in the notification area.

Update: 2009-08-29 – I was able to get the AuthenTec Inc. AES2810 finger print reader setup to login to Windows 7 with my fingerprint, it works like a charm.  To do this you will need to download the BETA version of the enrolment software here:

The blog site Three Wise Men has a tutorial on how to actually install, setup and enroll your finger print so you can start using this feature.

Update: 2009-10-22 - HP has started to release updated drivers for the 8530p which the new audio driver has fixed my mute button issue listed above.  As of todays date (2009-10-22) there are no Windows 7 Professional (x64) drivers.  I have installed the Windows Home (x64) drivers and they seem to work as expected.  Visit the HP site here.

Windows 2008 Install Tip for HP Laptops

12. June 2008 thefrozencoder IT - Technology (0)
If you are going to do a manual install of Windows 2008 and or Vista on any HP laptop you probably want to burn the c:SwSetup folder to a DVD/USB Key before you begin. This folder contains all of the original software installed as well as all of the drivers. Once you have installed the OS you can copy the folder back to your C: drive.

Here is a little trick to make the install process easer, create a text file in the c:SwSetup folder and rename it to install.inf. If you are missing drivers for some of your hardware (audio, network lan and wireless) are the usual MIA drivers. Just use the Update Driver feature and make sure you browse for a location and select the c:SwSetup folder, because the *.inf file is present you can do this. The update driver feature will search all subfolders for *.inf files to find a matching hardware device id and install the drivers for it. I do this so that I don’t have to pick each folder separately.

Windows 2008 and Me No More

12. June 2008 thefrozencoder IT - Technology (0)
So I decided that the disappearing mouse issue bothers me to much and went back to Windows XP (but not before making an image of the partition incase I wanted to go back after SP1 is released).

Of course before that I had to try the Vista image that came with the laptop, so I reinstalled it and BOOM, same problem.

Ahh Crap...

Oh wait maybe I’ll install SP1 for Vista and see it that helps. So after several reboots and a half an hour later I came to the conclusion that Yay! The disappearing mouse problem on my HP Laptop with an Nvida chipset using Dual Display is fixed (in my case) by installing Vista SP1. Sorry if that felt a bit wordy but search engines love wordy.

Windows 2008 and Me

7. May 2008 thefrozencoder Hardware, IT - Technology (0)
So I decided to install Windows 2008 on my HP dv9000 series laptop and use this guide to create a better than Vista experience using a more solid OS than the POS that is Vista. The install went as expected and I was able to update the missing drivers using the Vista ones that came with my laptop (yeah I know Vista drivers on Win2k8 so sue me)

So far so good, oops I spoke to soon…

Seems that I have inherited the disappearing mouse pointer syndrome. First I don’t have the computer set up to hibernate, second I don’t have the computer setup to go into screen saver first then turn off the monitor and third this behavior tends to happen every time the monitor either comes out of screensaver or from turned off. Searching Google has made me believe that this is a HP/Nvidia/Vista/Dual Monitor issue as there are a lot of HP/Nvidia/Vista/ Dual Monitor owners suffering from this behavior. The lame solution is to enable pointer trails and set the visibility to short when this happens. Of course this causes a performance drop with the speed of the mouse.

I am going to try and install Vista this weekend and see if I have the same problems with that OS and driver combination. If so it’s back to XP Pro for me.