Help for win7 drivers for Samsung X10 laptop

[alecela]

I'm planning to give away to local charity my old trusty Samsung X10 Laptop installed w/ win XP. Knowing that it's completely out-dated and lacks any support whatsoever, I fear that it might produce more trouble than the potential benefit. As such, I'm thinking of a clean install of win7 so that hopefully someone can get some use out of it with little hassle. It's got a 1.3Ghz Pentium M CPU and 2Gb of RAM w/ 40Gb PATA HDD.

I had this naive assumption that windows 7 would be backward compatible with old hardwares like mine but that's obviously not the case. I managed to get win7 to install without a glitch BUT I lack the ethernet driver, network driver & audio driver. I googled around and all I can find are dodgy sites w/ pdf file claiming to contain universal drivers for it everything made by Samsung!

So I'm hoping some of you experts out there can show me help/pointer pls? Tx in advance.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I would probably look into a linux install seeing how small the hdd is.

 

[yowanvista]

You may find generic Microsoft drivers for the other hardware from the MS driver catalogue but I wouldn't count on that due to the age of that system. As for graphics, you'll be stuck with the generic VGA driver as you won't find any WDDM driver for the GeForce4 440 Go, it simply doesn't exist. The oldest Nvidia products supported was the GeForce 5 FX series which were Vista compatible with a half-baked beta driver.

I'd advice sticking with XP SP3 with the latest current updates (using the POSReady registry 'tweak'). Linux distros won't run too well on that system either as anything that relies on hardware acceleration/composting will slow down the entire system. The Nouveau OSS driver for that GPU series haven't been updated in ages and doesn't support anything newer than OpenGL 1.2 and most modern applications will refuse to launch.

 

[alecela]

Hi,
I would probably look into a linux install seeing how small the hdd is.

Thanks. You do have valid points. Having said that, ubuntu/linux would probably be my last resort as I believe win7 can probably be maintained with relative ease whereas I can't say the same for the linux.

 

[alecela]

You may find generic Microsoft drivers for the other hardware from the MS driver catalogue but I wouldn't count on that due to the age of that system. As for graphics, you'll be stuck with the generic VGA driver as you won't find any WDDM driver for the GeForce4 440 Go, it simply doesn't exist. The oldest Nvidia products supported was the GeForce 5 FX series which were Vista compatible with a half-baked beta driver.

I'd advice sticking with XP SP3 with the latest current updates (using the POSReady registry 'tweak'). Linux distros won't run too well on that system either as anything that relies on hardware acceleration/composting will slow down the entire system. The Nouveau OSS driver for that GPU series haven't been updated in ages and doesn't support anything newer than OpenGL 1.2 and most modern applications will refuse to launch.

Thanks. My original concern w/ XP is that it's non supported hence it could leave the pc vulnerable to malware/virus etc etc. In any case, I've already done a clean install of win7 now so hopefully I'll be able to hunt down the drivers and be done w/ this little project.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Well I just checked a little 32bit win-7 and the install pretty much updated to date is around 25bg's so I suppose it's not too small.

 

[johnhoh]

you can identify your hardware device IDs and find drivers for it at this link

How to identify an unknown device (e.g. Wireless LAN module)?

 

[alecela]

you can identify your hardware device IDs and find drivers for it at this link

How to identify an unknown device (e.g. Wireless LAN module)?

Thanks! This is GREAT help! I managed to work out the exact model of the components, for example, Intel PRO 2100 Wireless PCI adaptor, and managed to get the driver, although it's only for XP:

Downloads for Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection

but it does work within w7. Once I can get on the net, windows update automatically updated the drivers for the remaining unknown devices and looks like i'm all set. Thanks again to all w/ helpful pointers & suggestions.

The other unknown devices, FWIW are:
-Realtek AC97 audio codec
-3Com 3C905C-TXM LAN adaptor

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
The lan should be installed by windows if you're actually connected to it
The generic driver should be fine

Realtek well that one you can gt from their site
Latest Realtek HD Audio Driver Version - Windows 7 Help Forums

Device Manager - Finding Unknown Devices - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[alecela]

Hi,
Well I just checked a little 32bit win-7 and the install pretty much updated to date is around 25bg's so I suppose it's not too small.

Hmm, just got the same installed, updated to SP1, the ONLY additional software being google chrome and I still have 24Gb left out of the 40Gb drive so I think for casual browsing/light office work, this would suffice.

The trouble is that this is on ATA interface so getting a new SSD/HD would be a challenge.