Windows 7 Drivers for HP dv7 Laptop

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Good morning. I’m refurbishing a vintage HP Pavilion dv7-3065dx laptop for our neighbor. There is no hard drive in it, but the sticker next to the touchpad says it’s Windows 7, and it has a single 2GB stick of DDR2-800 RAM.

I have a spare Windows 7 disc plus a 120GB SSD which could be installed, but HP support no longer has drivers for this model laptop. Apparently, they abandon all support after 10 years.

Plan B: Tested the laptop with a USB flash drive containing Chromium OS and it worked OK, i.e. email, Youtube, documents, etc. It seems fairly responsive, so the neighbor’s granddaughter could definitely use it for schoolwork and light games, video, music, etc.

Anyway, Windows 7 would still be first choice here (we’re fully aware of the lack of Win 7 updates). To install Win 7 it needs the HP driver package for that specific model. Maybe a general dv7 driver package would work.

Does anyone know of an archive of HP Pavilion drivers, please?

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In the worst case scenario, you could try the install and let MS try to find the drivers (or generic ones) good enough for it to work during the install.
Is there a sticker with the Win7 key on the computer? You will need that.

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[Microfix]

yeah, noticed that policy from HP as the driver page disappeared a couple of years back for our HP G60 also 2008.
You could try and establish who made each addon component visually taking note and search online:
Here is a starting point: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01868468
wifi – atheros or qualcomm: wifi drivers
touchpad – is probably synaptics
etc..
I’ve updated the 2008 device with the newer oem device drivers that were not issued by HP and all work as intended.

Edit: Found a site that provides links to the HP ftp site to download oem device drivers: https://download-drivers-laptop.blogspot.com/2011/06/hp-pavilion-dv7-3065dx-notebook-drivers.html
Some links work (website Moderator checked and ok) check each file with you AV once downloaded. These are packaged HP drivers I’m familiar with.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Microfix. Reason: Provide link to access HP ftp
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Microfix.

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satrow

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Thanks to all of you for your replies and suggestions. Will try to make use of your advice later today or tomorrow, and will report the results.

Actually tried installing Win 7 from disc but install failed due to missing drivers. I know you can install needed drivers during (at the beginning?) of the Win 7 install process, but as mentioned previously i couldn’t obtain the drivers from HP support website – arghh!

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Have you tried Linux? Older hardware is usually supported.

cheers, Paul

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WSstarvinmarvin wrote:

Actually tried installing Win 7 from disc but install failed due to missing drivers.

… this was actually fairly rare even with 7.

Would this happen to be one of those models with a RAID / AHCI (/ whatever) mode setting for the storage interface in the firmware menus? If so, switching that to something other than RAID may be needed. RAID mode is dependent on model-specific drivers, AHCI generic drivers are included in… hm, probably anything newer than Windows XP.

Paul T wrote:

Have you tried Linux? Older hardware is usually supported.

… yeah, use AHCI mode with Linux too.

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wavy

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Make sure the SATA controller actually finds your SSD in the BIOS setup.

This model apparently has AMD 880g chipset which has only SATA 1.0 (SATA 150) support (no SATA 3G/6G). Your SSD may or may not like that. Best to Google the SSD model number for SATA compatibilty.

If it’s not compatible then Win7 may simply doesn’t find a device to install to so complaining about a possible missing drivers.

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MSStarvinMarvin. Did you find the drivers? The SSD and HD on my 2012 DV7 just failed. I recall backing up the driver set from the HP website years ago, but I don’t know where this is. I’ve been to the various manufacturer websites for drivers, but no luck. I have an AMD Radeon 6700M and an Intel card that can be run in a switchable mode. MS installed an AMD driver from 2015. The laptop won’t run with it. It wants the 2012 driver which isn’t available on the AMD website. I found various websites offering drivers, but I’ve passed on using them after researching the site for being safe. I’d pay, but I haven’t found a reputable website.

BTW, I miss the old pizza shop on Beauregard St.in Alexandria.

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This might be an incredibly stupid suggestion, but what happens if you try to install Windows 10? I can’t think of a reason it shouldn’t work and it might even activate as the hardware info would have been relayed to Microsoft from HP’s servers when the machine was built and the result depends on how HP were purchasing licensing at that time.

At a command prompt the following will get the hardware into a text file so you can go google..

pnputil /enum-devices > %userprofile%\desktop\hardware.txt

 

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WSstarvinmarvin wrote:

Good morning. I’m refurbishing a vintage HP Pavilion dv7-3065dx laptop for our neighbor. There is no hard drive in it, but the sticker next to the touchpad says it’s Windows 7, and it has a single 2GB stick of DDR2-800 RAM.

I have a spare Windows 7 disc plus a 120GB SSD which could be installed, but HP support no longer has drivers for this model laptop. Apparently, they abandon all support after 10 years.

Plan B: Tested the laptop with a USB flash drive containing Chromium OS and it worked OK, i.e. email, Youtube, documents, etc. It seems fairly responsive, so the neighbor’s granddaughter could definitely use it for schoolwork and light games, video, music, etc.

Anyway, Windows 7 would still be first choice here (we’re fully aware of the lack of Win 7 updates). To install Win 7 it needs the HP driver package for that specific model. Maybe a general dv7 driver package would work.

Does anyone know of an archive of HP Pavilion drivers, please?

Wouldn’t the drivers at the following site work?

http://hpnotebookdrivers.com/hp-pavilion-dv7-3065dx-entertainment-notebook-pc-windows-7-64-bit-drivers/

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I would like to think that the OP has found a solution in the 18 months since this was first posted.

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After playing around with various solutions I finally settled on ChromeOS, or maybe it’s ChromiumOS when you download Neverware.com’s CloudReady version and put it on a PC. This avoids problems I’ve seen with other old Win 7 systems where some/many websites won’t load in Chrome browser and Firefox because they deem it not safe (website loads with red strikethrough line across the HTTPS: portion of the address line and content does not load).

The CloudReady ChromeOS/ChromiumOS works without any significant driver problems, needs less RAM to run, and has responsive web-based apps included. The young lady who received the laptop told her granddad that it works great and she was happy with it for schoolwork, social media, and video chat.

So, I received a nice ” ‘atta-boy ” and moved on to the next refurbishing gig. It’s nice to keep older gear working and keep it out of the worldwide e-cycle mountain.

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