Hp Pavilion 15-au501tx - Lost All Drivers when i installed Win7 Pro (64-bit) OS

[Al-2022]

Hi,

My Company purchased a Hp Pavilion 15-au501tx preloaded with Win10 (Home), and at that time, we needed Win7 Pro (64-bit) since it was for business use - so we bought a licensed OS and the shop did the installation.  Recently I found out that for reasons unknown to me, my former staff had rolled it back to Win10 (Home) and so I decided to format it and reintstal the Win7 Pro (64-bit). I was caught off-guard where the drivers are concerned - regrettably I didn't make a back-up copy of them.

If the only way is to download all the hardware drivers from their respective manufacturers, can anyone advise what models of components were used in this HP laptop? Or even better, if there's a full set of drivers for this machine that is available for download?

Appreciate any help i can get.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

See if you can use the W7 64 bit drivers and software from the 15-ay500 model series on yours.

HP 15-ay500 Notebook PC series Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

If there are multiple drivers that have the same description, use the ones labeled Skylake.

You will need to get the nvidia graphics driver from the Nvidia website, since that model uses the AMD graphics.

I don't see the USB 3 driver, so this one should work for you...

Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver - Skylake

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp81001-81500/sp81158.exe

If you have any problems finding some drivers, let me know, and I will be glad to help you further.

If you do, please provide the description of the device and the hardware ID for it.

Use this guide for how to find the hardware ID for a device...

How to Find Drivers for Unknown Devices in the Device Manager (howtogeek.com)

[Al-2022]

Hi Paul, thank you very much for your suggestions. It appears I stuffed up when I tried several drivers before receiving some advice - it destabilized Windows (couldn't boot normally). 

So I decided to download and create a Win10 Installation Media on a USB and managed to do a fresh install.  All the drivers came back thankfully.  Only thing is, I'm back at square 1 whereby it is Win10 Home.

I tried to change the product key to the Win7 Pro (under Settings > Activation), but was unsuccessful.  I then called up Microsoft support and was told i needed to get support from Hp as the Win7 Pro key is an OEM license, and that they couldn't help me from their end.  I hope there is still a way of getting this laptop back on a Pro version.

Best regards, Al.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Al:

Install W7 Pro like you did before.

Make sure it is activated.

Then connect to the internet vial wifi or ethernet, and click on the blue Update Now button at the link below and you should have an activated version of W10 Pro.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

HP won't help you because the notebook originally came with W10 Home and that would be all they support it for.

Also, I am surprised that using the W7 Pro product key didn't work to upgrade to W10 Pro.

This link indicated it should.  However, it does not specify what type of product key you need to do this with.

How to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Pro for free | ZDNet