looking for HP Pavilion Media Center m8000 PC manual

[CrossLee]

Hi, I got my m8000 back in 2006. It came with Vista but because Microsoft stopped supporting it years ago, I got fed up with living unprotected/unupdated and (because I didn't want to pay the fees to upgrade to Windows 10, may as well buy a new computer for that price and have it preinstalled) recently switched over to a free Linux OS (Lubuntu, variant of Ubuntu) and am trying to find out more information about my hardware to do some troubleshooting.

When I put in my model, the HP website told me it wouldn't support it because I've had it more than 10 years so they took the manuals off the website. But that I could ask on the forum and someone might be able to help me.

I found a PDF of the setup poster https://www.manualslib.com/manual/459531/Hp-Pavilion-Media-Center-M8000-Desktop-Pc.html but I still have the physical copy of that and it doesn't contain the information I'm looking for.

What I'd like to know is information about what graphics drivers my system came with, so I'm hoping to find a copy of the full manual for it which would list those specifications. The built-in software in Lubuntu hasn't been able to tell me what it is.

Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the manual PDF? Perhaps you saved a copy before HP enigmatically removed it?

The problem I'm facing is standard bootup leads me to a black screen, I can only access the Lubuntu OS by running Advanced Startup > Recovery Mode > Resume Normal Boot. Starting recovery mode apparently disables certain drivers, so I think some kind of driver built into the Pavilion isn't compatible with Lubuntu and if I can find out what it is, it may guide me in figuring out what codecs I might need to obtani.

[mdklassen]

Google is your friend.

Google-search, entering: HP Pavilion Media Center m8000 PC

and look at the search results.

Some of those look promising.

Watch out for "driver updater" sites that promote their non-free software. Sigh.

[mdklassen]

Or, scrounge-up an older graphics-adapter card, with a PCI (not PCI-e) interface, and install it. The motherboard will automatically disable the (unsupported by Linux) integrated graphics, and will use the add-in adapter. Hopefully, your variant of Linux will recognize and support that adapter.

[mdklassen]

> Starting recovery mode apparently disables certain drivers,

Device-drivers are "software", not "hardware".

So, it seems that the device-driver software included with your variant of Linux is not compatible with your hardware.

As you indicated, bypassing the loading of some software allows Lubuntu to use a "basic" device-driver.

> I think some kind of driver built into the Pavilion isn't compatible with Lubuntu

There are no "built-in" device-drivers as part of the Pavilion's hardware.

The device-driver software that is part of Windows is completely different from the device-driver software included with Lubuntu.

> if I can find out what it is, it may guide me in figuring out what codecs I might need to obtain.

A "codec" is a device or program that compresses data to enable faster transmission and decompresses received data.

Most often, a "codec" is used for transmission of audio or video streams.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @CrossLee

Below is the link to the product specs page for your model PC.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00874901

It has the onboard nVidia GeForce 6150SE graphics adapter.