HP Pavilion zd7000a (zd7380us) Upgrade

I was the proud owner of an HP Pavilion zd7380us until one day the screen went black and it wouldn't start up.  Being out of warranty and I paid HP to fix the laptop at a flat rate.  What I got back was something different.  I was now the proud owner of the HP Pavilion zd7000a.  The primary difference is that the video card.  Whereas the zd7380us had an nVidia GeForce FX Go5700, the zd7000a requires the ATI M22/M24 video driver.  Windows reports it as the ATI Radeon X600.

Specifications

• Release Year:  2004
• Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor supporting HT Technology 3.20 GHz, 512K Cache, 800 MHz FSB
• 2 GB RAM
• nVidia GeForce FX Go5700 (zd7380us)/ATI Radeon X600 (zd7000a)
• Mainboard:  Quanta 30CA
• Chipset:  Intel i915P/i915G rev 0E

In terms of processor upgrades, the fastest Northwood processor available is the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor supporting HT Technology 3.40 GHz, 512K Cache, 800 MHz FSB.  Based on the information I could find, it is possible that the Prescott processor with the Socket 478 should be compatible, but the fastest Prescott processor is a 3.4 GHz.  The Prescott gives you the 1MB L2 cache.  After that, your only option is the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor supporting HT Technology 3.40E GHz, 1M Cache, 800 MHz FSB, additional information available here at cpu-world.com.  The exteme edition Pentium 4 processor gives you a 2MB L3 cache.  Anything higher than the 3.4 GHz is a Socket 775.

HP Pavilion zd7000a and Windows 7
So I tried to get Windows 7 installed on the zd7000a, but the sticking point was video drivers, as is the case with most old notebooks and newer operating systems.  Most other components install well or aren't necessary for normal operation, so you can usually live without it.  But the video card is one of those things that you just can't let go, probably because you can see the failure.

In most instances the Windows XP drivers that the manufacturer provides generally works, so manually installing the drivers usually works well.  However, in the case of the zd7000a ATI Radeon X600, this isn't the case, the computer blue screens with one of the ATI drivers as the culprit.

The solution, download the AMD Radeon Legacy Video Card Drivers for 32 bit Windows Vista.  Run the Catalyst Software Suite (10-2_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc.exe) executable and it will extract the contents to a folder before actual installation.  The installer will fail because it can't figure out what hardware you actually have, so install the drivers manually by pointing to the extract location (C:\ATI\Support\10-02_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc\Packages\Drivers\Display\LH_INF), select the X600 drivers.