Wiped new HP laptop disk to clone from my old drive, drivers are not recognizing respective device

[jseas]

Got a Win11 x64 14t-dq300 laptop from HP's official site. Immediately wiped the entire disk (no backup) and used linux dd to clone my old disk onto this with Win10 x64 20H2, since Win10 typically does great with finding drivers and all that.

It boots just fine, but there are a multitude of devices missing, most notably the wifi adapter (the thing that would allow me to detect and download the rest of the drivers from Windows update). Device manager shows it as 'Network controller' under the 'Unknown devices' section, and its hardware ID after a quick google confirms it is an RTL8821CE, as is also stated on the back of the laptop. Trackpad is also unusable, and CPU is only showing one of two cores recognized...

Before going to Realtek I went to HP's site for drivers for this model, and they are just wrong. They are not the drivers this requires. I tried anyway, no luck.

So I go to Realtek's site and get that driver for this version of Windows and install it. No confirmation message, just kinda exits after a while. I restart and nothing has changed.

So I get a bit desperate and get the installer from lenovo's site, which is a different looking installer clearly made by realtek and not lenovo. Installs 'successfully', restart, no difference whatsoever in devman or through my adapter properties.

I say screw it and install a brand new Win11 x64 (not in-place upgrade), same exact issue, tons of 'unknown' devices including wifi and trackpad. Not even in the installer would my trackpad or wifi work. Linux Mint recognized my devices just fine.

I tried to get to a real person through HP's site and it told me I had to type in a serial number for my product, so I did, and it told me it didn't exist. Fun! I typed in some other random serial number and product ID and it told me it can't find a support agent for my location. I'm in Ohio lol, What is this?

So I tried HP Support Assistant or whatever it's called. It 'installed' and once it exited, I couldn't find any shortcuts. I went into program files x86 and tried to open it from there, and it gave me some ridiculous error i'm not excited to try and type out.

So I saw there was a legacy Support Assistant, and I installed it, and it actually ran. First thing it told me was that my network is required for it to work, and then I was at a dead end again.

I feel like my next option is to send this thing back and uh... buy some other brand, or something. Really no idea why this has to be so 2006, HP.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

This is the support page for your notebook when I enter the model number in the HP partsurfer website.

HP 14 inch Laptop PC 14-d3000 IDS Base Model Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

There are drivers for W10 and W11.

[jseas]

That does appear to have the realtek driver (i think, haven't tested yet), but that's not my laptop model. This is 14-d3000, mine is 14t-dq300

Oh wait, the non-20H2 win10 driver does not have the right drivers. Totally different lineup there

Anyway I will try this and get back

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That's what HP indicates it is:

HP PartSurfer

Gives 4 product numbers for that model series.

Click on any of those product numbers and they all indicate what I posted for you.

Which product number is yours?

Not that it really matters with a clean install of Windows, but worst-case scenario is you may be able to create a bootable USB recovery drive for the specific product number of your notebook with the HP cloud recovery tool.

[jseas]

My OP was off, I have 21H2 not 20H2, so what happened was I chose on that driver page the non-20H2 since I didn't have that version, and it gave me the wrong drivers. Apparently even if I'm on 21H2 I need the 20H2 drivers, I think because the driver model changed in that update. Not very clear to the end user

Anyway everything's working now. yea this was all sorts of confusing, not a good experience, glad it's over. Thanks! 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.