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Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.

‎12-14-2019 07:56 PM

HP Recommended
Product: HP6550b Probook
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)

Howdy,

I'm a newbie to this forum and I'm looking for a bit of help to get  my old 6550b probook up and running again. I know it's old but it does what I need because it's one of few notebooks that has a real serial port and I need that.

 

The notebook was running fine with Win7Pro (64bit) and Office 10 (32bit) along with a number of utilities I run until it had a terminal HDD failure. I replaced the HDD with a new one and I now need to build the system back up again but I'm having difficulties working out which drivers to install. I'm not a computer geek so I'm flying blind on most of this stuff.

 

I can work out the simple issues like audio drivers, chipset drivers &c. but I'm having difficulty with the rest of the driver choices. The HP support pages offer a number of drivers that appear to refer tot he same devices. For example, there are 9 or so network drivers. Do I install them all, are there specific ones I need to install or are there ones I need to avoid?

 

I've tried to navigate the support pages and each time I do I end up with different results. Things like Win7Pro being real slow to start (even after all the updates are installed) or other times, the notebook starts up but takes a very long time to log onto my WiFi network. I also use MS Security Essentials. Sometimes, it doesn't start and I need to turn it on manually. All weird stuff that I can't seem to work out. The notebook passes all its own self-tests and it doesn't detect any RAM or other hardware errors.

 

Can anyone advise on a definitive set of drivers I need to install to get the notebook running properly?

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