hi any help would be appretiated.

my mates hard drive just failed in his hp pavillion 423.uk so im helping him gettin his pc runin again. i installed a new hard drive and put on xp pro with no problem.

The thing is that the computer didn't come with any display sound etc drivers on disk they were already on the hard drive.

So i am constantly viewing the screen in 640x480 and am in need of the display driver which i cannot find.

can anyone help.

thanks

g

hp pavillion 423.uk
1.8 celeron
xp pro
mobo: Hewlett-Packard HP System Board HP P/N
VG31316
256mb
80gb wd hd

Dani AI

Generated

Short answer: a clean XP install uses Windows' generic "Standard VGA" driver and will stay at 640x480 until the correct graphics driver for the onboard GPU (or discrete card) is installed. Below is a compact, practical workflow that fixes this reliably.

First, identify the video device precisely: open Device Manager (Start -> right-click My Computer -> Manage -> Device Manager) and expand Display adapters. If it reads "Standard VGA Adapter" open Properties -> Details tab and choose "Hardware Ids" from the drop‑down. Copy the string that looks like PCI\VEN_xxxx&DEV_xxxx (vendor = VEN, device = DEV). You can also run dxdiag or msinfo32 to see adapter names, but hardware IDs are the most reliable for driver lookup.

Next, get the driver from the device vendor (Intel/AMD/NVIDIA) or the PC maker. Make sure you download the package that matches Windows XP and the correct architecture (32‑bit vs 64‑bit). If the download is an EXE, extract it (many unpack to a folder). In Device Manager use Update Driver -> Browse my computer -> Let me pick -> Have Disk and point to the extracted folder so Windows installs the vendor INF. Install motherboard/chipset drivers first — they help Windows enumerate onboard devices correctly.

Troubleshooting notes: if the screen goes black after a driver install, reboot with F8 and choose Safe Mode to roll back the driver. Check Monitor driver (Generic PnP vs vendor INF) if available resolutions are still missing. Avoid untrusted driver download sites; prefer vendor support pages or the Microsoft Update Catalog. As discovered, identifying the chipset and grabbing the Intel package fixed it; and pointed toward checking HP support as an alternate route. When asking for further help, include the exact XP edition (32/64) and the Hardware Ids string.

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have you checked hp's website?

my aunt has an oldish hp (pentium 3) and after upgrading to xp the same thing happened

have you checked hp's website?

my aunt has an oldish hp (pentium 3) and after upgrading to xp the same thing happened

Yes i have checked the hp website they only have mostly updates for the drivers not the actual drivers i need.

anyway i did some further investigating with the mobo and got sum details of that ie, chipset and onboard graphics and found the drivers on an intel website problem solved.

thanks for your time anyway.
g

You can find the video driver (and the drivers for the other HW functions) at

Good luck.
Bob

You can find the video driver (and the drivers for the other HW functions) at

Good luck.
Bob

if u look again, you will c they are just driver updates, not the actual drivers bob. you have to go to the intel support site for them.

g

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