HP Pavilion dv6772eg running Windows 7 (64 Bit)

The instructions below have worked on my Laptop HP Pavilion dv6772eg running Windows 7 (English) 64 Bits. Do not try it if you have another HW/SW configuration.

NOTE IMPORTANT!
Actually there is a complete solution for HP Pavilion models dv6000 and dv6900 Notebooks you may only go to this Link with more actualised information.

HISTORY:

HP Pavilion dv6772eg, this is my notebook which I bought two years ago. It has a pre installed Windows Vista Home Premium (32 Bit). Now I have installed Windows XP and Debian GNU Linux (using BootItNG as boot manager). The problem began when I installed Windows XP ... the driver for the Ethernet controller was not supported by XP. The other point is that HP does not support XP drivers for a machine which was created for Windows Vista. This scenario was repeated when I asked HP if Windows 7 support all system drivers for my Laptop. I have run the "Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor" which marked the "nVidia Ethernet Controller" as not supported by Windows 7. Some of the question in my head were ...

* Which chipset has the ethernet controller?

* Are nVidia drivers for existent hardware not developed anymore?

* Why does the ethernet card work in Debian Linux correctly?

Well, I have spent two weeks till I arrived to the solution, the steps are very simple. I hope this information is also usefull for you.

INSTRUCTIONS:

a) Windows 7 English (64 Bits)

I have installed windows 7.

b) HP Wireless Assistant

Then I have downloaded and installed SP44700 "HP Wireless Assistant" from this Link . I prepared the WLAN for connection.

c) Antivirus

I have installed "Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus" in order to protect my laptop when connecting to Internet.

d) Windows Update

Connected to WLAN and run Windows Update actualizing the computer system.

Following updates like

- Atheros Communication Inc. driver

- Conexant - Audio Conexant High Definition SmartAudio 221

etc... were correctly installed.

e) NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS Driver

I went to the Link and let scan my laptop looking for the graphic driver (Option 2) downloading the file

"195.62_notebook_winvista_win7_64bit_international_whql". The grafic card was correctly detected by the nVidia scan application. I proceeded to the installation ot this driver. Note: After the installation you can uninstall the nVidia PhysX application if you want (it is not supported).

f) System Restore

I made a backup of my system with "System Restore and Driver Rollback Instructions"

At this point I have found by using the command "lspci -v"  (running Linux on my notebook) that the laptop uses an "MCP65 Ethernet controller". Running Windows 7 there were still faulty devices like Coprocessor, nVidia nForce Network Controller and PCI Express bridge

In nVidia website I have searched  for "MCP65 Ethernet" without results, pls. if you find the nVidia driver in its website let me know!

The clue would be to find the chipset number which used by the laptop, I did not want to run any driver software without knowing the name of the chipset. Please, if you find it tell me!

g) NVIDIA nForce Chipset

Finally I came to the idea for searching the string "NVIDA nForce chipset driver dv6772eg" in Google. Surprisingly you will not find this driver if you look in "Select software and drivers" page!

There was only one question, this driver is for Windows Vista 32 and 64 bits! and for my Windows 7 64 Bits??

Then I decided to download the driver from this Link and install it (even if it was developed for Vista 64 Bit)

SP36213 : NVIDIA nForce Chipset, the name of the file is "sp36213 - NVIDIA chipset Driver Vista"

IT WORKED! I have only two faulty devices called "Base System Device" in Device Manager, I do not know how to repair them but my Ethernet Card is at least working properly!

I hope you enyoy my Blog too! :-)

And have a nice day, Bye!