Compaq Presario CQ71 220SO Network Drivers

Yesterday i had some difficulties trying to install Windows XP on a Compaq Presario CQ71 220SO.

The computer itself was delivered with Windows Vista Home Premium which was, well needless to say. Slow and unstable!

Since I've had no difficulties to install XP on several machines earlier i'd never expected to spend 14hours a row to install all necessary drivers.

So, i first tried to install Windows XP from the regular install CD, but guess what?
The installation program could not find any harddrives at all! Turns out the machine uses Intel ICH9M-E chipset, wich is AHCI based SATA controller.

So, i slipstreamed the Intel Matrix Storage Drivers into the CD ( added Service Packs aswell ) and voila! It works flawlessly!

So, next step was to install chipset drivers and graphic card, no worries there.

Now to the hard part. Three devices could not be installed by default, the WLAN, the LAN and the Audio.

Checked hardware ID's, Vendor ID's, with of course no result.

But then, i found something interesting at the PCI database ( google it ).

Turns out the the WLAN chipset used is actually a Atheros AR9285 with a different Subsystem ID. Which of course explains why it didn't install the drivers properly.

So, added a little patch in the drivers, automatic install pointed to my drivers and it works great! Everything works just as it should!

Next, the LAN. Turns out this is just the same as with the Atheros WLAN, this is however a Realtek 8139 chipset!

Added a patch for that as well, also works flawlessly!


Now i have network accessibility atleast! Updated Windows and thought everything was fine.. But it sure as hell wasn't!

Just for the record, the driver installs earlier took about 2hours, which means something took another 12hours. This was the Audio drivers!

Turns out that it uses the infamous IDT/SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC.

Basicly, the problem is of that the Device Manager returns a code 10 on this driver most of the time, device could not be started.

I've tried 12 different driver versions, googled and found solutions, tried all of them out. But nothing can get the audio working properly, actually. Nothing get's it to work at all!

So, 12 hours later i gave up, ended up now to install Vista Home Basic again.

So, if anybody can give me a solution for this problem I'll love you for life!

Oh, here are the patched drivers for LAN and WLAN:

Atheros AR9285
Realtek 8139