Hi all, hoping to get some advice on some driver issues I'm having after downgrading my fiancee's Compaq (HP) Presario notebook from Vista Basic to WinXP.

The machine was never really of a high enough spec to deal with Vista and over time became slower and slower.

Rather than do a clean reinstall of Vista (which we've never really taken to anyway) I decided to put it on XP and it runs beautifully; the only problem being that now most of the peripherals have ceased to work.

Of these the lack of hibernation / standby options and wireless connectivity are the most annoying. As regards the former, I've searched the internet for drivers but seem to be getting lots of conflicting info. As far as WLAN and Bluetooth go, I have managed to d/l HP Wireless Assistant from their site but that has only given me back the wireless button functionality. When I press it, the status of the wireless connections changes from 'this device has been disabled from the wireless button' to 'this device has been disabled in Device manager'.

Problem is, I can't see the devices or any likely contenders in Device manager and clicking Help just warns me that the devices won't be recognised by XP if they've been turned off in Setup. I have tried disabling and enabling them in Setup with no success.

Given the number of threads on the internet about downgrading these laptops I'm guessing mine is a common issue. However few of these threads are helpful and some are outright contradictory, hence my post on DAL. I'm sure this is a reasonably simple driver compatibility issue as Wireless Assistant is recognising the devices but I've so far been unable to activate them. The lack of hibernate / sleep options is also annoying as it involves shutting down the machine everytime we need to leave it for a period of time (good thing it boots up in no time on XP!). Some advice from anyone who's dealt with similar issues would therefore be gratefully received and much appreciated.

For what it's worth, here are the specs:

Compaq Presario C500
(RQ335UA#ABA)

Sys Board ID: 30C6

BIOS Version F.11

Serial #: CND65214ZP

512Mb Memory

Intel Celeron M CPU 440 Processor 1.86 GHz

Since you didn't list the Wireless chip being used in your girlfriends laptop, here is a stab in the dark. HP Compaq nc6140 Notebook PC- Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver - HP Business Support Center

I just downloaded the driver and the wireless now works perfectly - so thank you very much for the link! On a related note, do you have any ideas about the sleep mode issues ('standby' grayed out in the 'Shut Down' dialog box) and whether there's anything I can d/l in order to get it working?

Don't know if this relates, so another stab in the dark.

Compaq Presario C500 Notebook PC series- System Will Not Enter Standby/Hibernation With 3D Screensaver Active - c01207163 - HP Business Support Center

No luck with that one unfortunately; clicking the d/l link took me to a 'page moved' screen on the MS site. Besides, I haven't enabled a screensaver (the site suggests it's an issue with 3D screensavers) and the system has Service Pack 3 installed (when the MS page talks about the fix being included in SP1). But thanks for having a look for me anyway!