Which Route?

[pcspike]

Hi,

I have a HP Pavilion laptop DV6 (6c56sa Entertainment) which I have not used for quite some time. When I powered up, it didn’t recognise a HDD which I thought strange. I took the drive out and the connection seemed ok. I then thought of changing the CMOS battery and it booted normally!

So as to have a fresh start I decided to reinstalled windows 7 using the F11 key, though everything went smoothly, it does seem to run slow. I noticed too that reinstall has included quite a few applications that I wouldn’t be interested in. I uninstalled a few of them, this improved boot time from 5 minutes to just over 3 up to sign-in.

Given that the spec of the laptop is pretty good; Intel i7, and 8GB of RAM got me thinking about changing the HDD to an SSD like the Samsung 860 EVO, 2.5” SSD with windows 10 OS rather than 7. However, I’m a little unsure about quite a few things and hoping for some advice here.

The Samsung drive is sata3 but I’m unable to find any info so as to establish if the laptop is sata2 or 3?

Also do you think that it would be better to install windows 10 as an upgrade or would I be better formatting the drive with just a windows 10 install? I quite like the F11 option and there are some programs that I do like.

I’m thinking too about the drivers that come with the original installation including the fingerprint reader.

Thanks

[Huffer]

You are correct to be thinking in terms of an SSD and it really does not matter if the system is SATA 2 or SATA 3; a SATA 3 SSD will work fine on either platform and the performance increase is worth the effort in either case. I do believe yours is a SATA 2 system if that is important for you to know. I think Windows 7 is likely the optimal OS for that machine. If you can boot to Windows 7 using the original hard drive and you have not done it already the HP Backup and Recovery app has an option to make a recovery thumb drive which you could use to install original factory software including the F11 partition onto a new clean SSD like the 860 Evo. The factory install would also include all drivers needed to make the system work and the HP Support Assistant app which will let you download and install driver and app updates with one click, of which there will be many. My other advice is to get a decent sized SSD at least a 250/256 and preferably a 500/512 to insure that the factory recovery medium works for you. 

Post back with any questions and please accept as solution if its the info you needed. 

[pcspike]

Hi and thanks for the comprehensive reply.

So as to cover all the options open to me, in particular windows 10, if I was to install it as a clean install, would there then be the option to use the HP facilities? Failing this how would I install the original drivers?

I have notice that this model of laptop does come with windows 10, (presumably a later version).

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Not sure what you mean by HP "facilities". HP would not have official drivers or apps for Windows 10 for this model but Windows 10 has a pretty comprehensive hardware database of drivers so odds are it would install and "just work" and any problem drivers could be corrected from device manufacturer websites or elsewhere. HP never sold this model or models from the same series with Windows 10 because it did not exist at the time. HP continued to and still does sell "Pavilion" laptops but they are different machines with more contemporary hardware and Windows 10. So there is no need to worry about "original drivers" if you install Windows 10.  I am sure you can have a satisfying computing experience with Windows 10 on that machine it might just take a little more resourcefulness to get it working 100%. For example your Intel HD 3000 video was not technically supported for Windows 10. The tech community has come up with some workarounds however we would need to help you find and install. I have Windows 10 running happily on more than one computer with the HD 3000 graphics. 

[pcspike]

Okay.

Thanks for your help