New laptop, WLAN questions

[Reality]

i'm one of the crazies who stood outside of staples for 4+ hours to get the $349 laptop

got it home, first thing I did was format it and put XP on it because the system specs, while pretty decent for a laptop, weren't up to snuff for running Vista (1GB of ram, shared w/ the x3100 intel graphics card isn't going to cut it)

anyways, i was curious if anyone here was familiar with broadcom wireless network adapters that HP/Compaq puts into their systems. i've been unable to find a working windows XP (32bit fyi) driver for this and it's frustrating because I really want to get this working before I install anything else on the machine

if anyone is familiar with this specific network adapter & windows XP, please post your thoughts. device manager didnt list any specific model, the only thing it showed (while I had vista on it) was "Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN, driver file BCMWL6.sys

[Reality]

Ok, found a solution that seems to be working fine (including the wireless button functionality on the laptop's keyboard area)

http://support.us.dell.com/support/down ... eid=230092

So if anyone purchased the Compaq laptop at staples on black friday and wanna get rid of Vista and put XP on it, you can use this driver for the wireless lan device

[Killgannon]

thats part of the reason why i went with an intel adapter in my laptop

[Vyvian]

HP and Compaq have every driver for windows vista, windows xp, and in most cases even windows 2000, on their website for every model of computer they sell. Some models have a few different options though, so you have to kind of.. figure out which driver to download sometimes.

[Reality]

HP and Compaq have every driver for windows vista, windows xp, and in most cases even windows 2000, on their website for every model of computer they sell. Some models have a few different options though, so you have to kind of.. figure out which driver to download sometimes.

actually, the particular model I purchased (C712NR) on their website, only lists Windows Vista supported drivers for the WLAN (as well as the sound chipset)

this is most likely because this specific model now only ships with Vista

C712NR XP Support Page

C712NR Vista Support Page

[Vyvian]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...tem=ob-38773-1

Try this one, it sounds pretty generic.

[Reality]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...tem=ob-38773-1

Try this one, it sounds pretty generic.

yeah that one doesn't work