[TX2500] Updated HP's XP drivers list, and guide.

[darionco]

Hello,

After I broke the XP installation on my TX2500 (TX2524ca) I had to reinstall and decided to give HP drivers a try, well... the results are pretty good so I decided to put this guide together.

Thanks
First of all big thanks to Forrestsun, Agashka, Drtigerlilly and everyone alse that helped in the process of discovering all the correct XP drivers for the TX2500 series.

Remarks.
The guide and drivers presented here are a fast solution if you just want things to work under Windows XP, if you want a more accurate and customizable installation, please refer to Agashka's TX2500z driver and guide page or his official thread.

For this guide I assume you already know how to install Windows XP and you have medium computer knowledge.

First steps.
First thing is to get a copy of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, here are a few links regarding where to buy a copy, I think newegg is a good option.

Now let's get ready to slipstream the SATA driver and install Windows XP.

Download drivers.
You can download a pack containing all the necessary drivers for the TX2524ca (no finger print reader) here (303.3 MB) or you can download them yourself. The pack contains:

1. WDM_R204.exe - Realtek HD Sound drivers
2. sp40204.exe - HP Integrated module with Bluetooth wireless technology
3. card reader - Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader Drivers
4. CIR - ENE CIR Driver version 1.31 for windows vista (read instructions)
5. TX2500_ATI_3200HD_8_8_darionco - ATI HD 3200 Display drivers with rotation enabled
6. sp40657.exe - Realtek LAN Driver for Microsoft Windows XP
7. sp39275.exe - Motorola SM56 SY Modem Driver
8. sp39691.exe - AMD Processor Update for Microsoft Windows XP
9. sp40139.exe - HP Quick Launch Buttons
10. sp40046.exe - AMD SATA AHCI Controller Driver
11. sp40075.exe - Synaptics Touchpad Driver
12. sp33867.exe - Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for HD Audio
13. sp39280.exe - Wacom Digitizer Driver
14. sp39912.exe - Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver

If you want to download the drivers yourself, google the filenames or go to http://www.hp.com and search for the "sp#####" file names.

Slipstream the SATA driver.
In order to install Windows XP we need to give the installation program the correct SATA drivers. If you have an external USB floppy drive, just run the "sp40046.exe" (inside the sata folder) and choose to uncompress to a place you remember and copy the files over to a blank floppy disk. Then, install windows XP using the floppy disk to use the drivers during the installation process.

If you, like me, don't have an external floppy drive; you will have to slipstream the drivers to the installation DVD (you could probably squeeze it in one CD).

1. Run the "sp40046.exe" file (inside the sata folder) and, when asked, choose a folder in you hard drive that you remember.
2. The SATA drivers installation will start, cancel it if you want.
3. Download and install nLite, you can get it from http://www.nliteos.com/
4. Copy both Windows XP Tablet PC disks to you hard drive, in the same directory, if windows gives you any warnings, just click "yes to all"
5. Start nLite, choose you language and click next
6. Select the folder where you just copied the installation CDs and click next twice
7. Click on "Drivers" and "Bootable ISO" and click next
8. Click "insert" and "single driver"
9. Navigate to the folder where you unpacked the SATA driver in step 1
10. Navigate to folder "RAID7xx\x86", select the file "ahcix86.inf" and click "open"
11. In the windows that appears, select "AMD SATA AHCI Controller-x86 platform" and click "OK"
12. Click "next" and when aked if you want to start the process click "yes"
13. Now you can either create an ISO image to burn to a DVD or burn directly using nLite.

Install Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
Once you have burned your brand new DVD (or CD) with the SATA drivers slipstreamed, use it to install Windows XP as usual, remember that you got to have a Tablet PC edition key to use all the Tablet PC features that come with this edition of windows.

Post Installation.
As you will see, the only thing that works out of the box is the ir remote. Let's install the rest of the drivers.

First install the network drivers and go to Windows update and install all the updates available, if possible, install SP3.

Once you computer is updated, install all the provided drivers but the ENE CIR driver; if you installed service pack 3 you don't have to install the UAA driver, otherwise you have to install it BEFORE installing the audio driver.

If you have problems with 2D performance such as slow scrolling in Firefox 3

• don't install / uninstall Catalyst Control Center (the display driver must ramain installed)
• right-click on your desktop
• click "properties"
• click the "settings" tab
• click the "advanced" button
• click the "troubleshoot" tab
• move the "hardware acceleration" slider ONE point to the left, so the description says something like "Disable cursor and bitmap accelerations. Use this setting..."
• click "OK" in both opened windows

For those models with fingerprint reader, I think this is the appropriate driver:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp35501-36000/sp35640.exe

ENE CIR Driver
After installing all the drivers, you should be left with one "Unknown Driver" in the device manager, well, that is the infamous ENE CIR Device. As you can read here its only purpose is to receive data from the laptop's remote (and probably from other very specific IR peripherals), but you will notice that if you followed my tutorial, your remote works even without the ENE CIR driver installed, so why install the ENE CIR driver I ask??? you don't have to.

You should also see a "HP Remote Control HID Device" under Human Interface Devices.

If you still want to install the ENE CIR driver do as follows:

1. Open the device manager, right-click on the unknown device and click "Update driver"
2. Select "No, not this time" and click next
3. Select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and click next
4. Select "Don't search. I will select the driver to install" and click next
5. Select "Human Interface Device" and click next
6. In manufacturer select "Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P." and in model select "HP Remote Control HID Device" and click next
7. Click "yes" in the warning window
8. Click "finish"

The driver should be installed and working, if you get a warning saying that the device couldn't be started:

1. Uninstall the driver that we just installed and reboot
2. When asked follow the same process as before up to step 5
3. Click "Have Disk..."
4. Click "Browse" and navigate to the folder of the "ENE CIR Driver version 1.31 for windows vista"
5. Navigate to "enecir_v1_3_1\Vista", click OPEN and click OK
6. Click next and wait for the driver to install
7. Click finish, ignore the warnings if any
8. Uninstall the driver and reboot
9. Repeat the steaps to install the "HP Remote Control HID Device" driver.
10. You should have the driver installed and the remote working, enjoy.

Conclusions
The HP Pavillion TX2500 series of tablet pc where definitely not made for Windows XP, this is the easyest way I've got my TX2524ca to work with XP, so i'm sharing it.

If you have any questions or the drivers simply don't work for you, please let me know by replying to this thread. Thanks are also appreciated.

cheers

darionco

[virtuatony]

Thank you, Darionco as well as Forrestsun, Agashka, Drtigerlilly. I've been lurking here for awhile after buying a tx2517ca, and really disliking vista you all seem to be the ones who put the work into getting xp working right.

I followed your instructions except I installed .net 2.0 in windows update after the install before the rest of the drivers(thought i read something like ati's catalyst control doesn't work without it, maybe I'm crazy).

I have 2 mystery devices in device manager I know one is the fingerprint reader and I'm not sure what the other is maybe the IR? Anyway those aren't important to me.

XP is just so much more responsive and stable than Vista so far so thanks once again.

Now one thing I can't figure out is how to turn the touch feature off. I know in vista there was pen flicks where you can turn it off, but I can't find anything in XP like that. I just happen to rest my hand on the tablet, when I write sometimes and it's annoying what that does to whatever I'm writing. Any help on this would be much appreciated.

[DRTigerlilly]

try using touch control

[v0va]

^ no luck, touch is still enabled

[virtuatony]

Thanks for the advice Doctor, however I tried it this morning and it doesn't seem to do anything, even rebooted with it in the startup folder no change.

Good thing I kept my vista partition just need to fix the bootloader.

[seco]

thanks for the great post

is these drivers applied to TX 2550ee ?
if so would you mind upload it to another website please
thanks in advance.

[agashka]

Wow nice post you made there.
Essentially those looks alot like the same drivers, except with the installer!
BTW: you don't need the UAA drivers if you install the most recent version of Audio drivers.

[darionco]

Originally Posted by virtuatony

Thank you, Darionco as well as Forrestsun, Agashka, Drtigerlilly. I've been lurking here for awhile after buying a tx2517ca, and really disliking vista you all seem to be the ones who put the work into getting xp working right.

I followed your instructions except I installed .net 2.0 in windows update after the install before the rest of the drivers(thought i read something like ati's catalyst control doesn't work without it, maybe I'm crazy).

I have 2 mystery devices in device manager I know one is the fingerprint reader and I'm not sure what the other is maybe the IR? Anyway those aren't important to me.

XP is just so much more responsive and stable than Vista so far so thanks once again.

Now one thing I can't figure out is how to turn the touch feature off. I know in vista there was pen flicks where you can turn it off, but I can't find anything in XP like that. I just happen to rest my hand on the tablet, when I write sometimes and it's annoying what that does to whatever I'm writing. Any help on this would be much appreciated.

That's weird, every time I put the pen close to the screen the driver automatically disables touch... probably if I touch the screen and the pen is not close enough, I guess I just got used to it.

Originally Posted by seco

thanks for the great post

is these drivers applied to TX 2550ee ?
if so would you mind upload it to another website please
thanks in advance.

I don't see why they shouldn't apply, most of the TX2500 series use the same hardware, so they should work.

Originally Posted by agashka

Wow nice post you made there.
Essentially those looks alot like the same drivers, except with the installer!
BTW: you don't need the UAA drivers if you install the most recent version of Audio drivers.

Yup, that's why I said that if users want some more customizable and complete way to install drivers they should take a look at your guide.

[ferguson81]

thank you for the installation instructions and help... I figured out that Windows XP is not so fast as windows Vista. I have bought tx2540es for me and for a friend of mine. he uses the windows vista edition and I use windows XP with the help of the forum contrubitors (thanks again).

the problem is about the video driver... in firefox 3 you can see the difference as darionco mentioned. 2d acceleration is so slow that cannot be fixed unless the troubleshoot option hardware acceleration is turned to NONE. but if you get the slider to NONE you cannot use the rotate screen ability....

I did whatever I can to get rid of this problem but couldn't. the windows xp users will you please check if the same problems occurs to you?

How?
In acrobat proffesional 7.0 (I think the version is not important - this is the version of mine) open a 150 pages scanned book and try to zoom in and out using control button + mouse wheel... if your computer cannot zoom as you scroll the mouse wheel that means you have the same problem and you should turn the troubleshoot hardware acceleration slider to none...

another check if your computer is slow like mine with hardware acceleration full or 1 point left is : make an excel sheet using Excel 2003 (that's the version I use- no matter which version you use the problem will persist) with 5000 rows and 6 columns. you can use only numbers no matter what you write. slide the right page scrolling slider to see if the refresh rate is enough to see all the page in a moment. what I see is the numbers is refreshed in a slow way that I cannot even see the bottom half of the page while I am scrolling down.


all of these problem is fixed when I get the hardware acceleration slider to none. but I don't want to use that way...

will you please check if you have the same problem and report it here. If so I will upgrade to windows vista to use my laptop with full performance....

thank you all

[ferguson81]

the most recent display driver can be downloaded from AMD site, but the rotation function doesn't work with this release... I have fixed the driver and uploaded it to internet.
feel free to use the most recent driver...

http://rapidshare.com/files/159621714/hotfix.rar

the original driver page is catalyst 8.10 hotfix