Packard Bell EasyNote MX52 Windows XP drivers

On the official international site there are only Windows Vista drivers for the model. Our neighbors bought it with pre-installed Opensuse. They did some stupid unrecoverable things, logged in as „root“. Good for them I was near to help. They wanted both Windows and Linux.

Opensuse had almost no problems with the hardware. After a short research the adequate repositories were added and everything was functioning smoothly.

But after Windows was installed and updated, 6 unrecognized items still remained in hardware manager. It took me hours to find them all – since every one of them had to be tested for compatibility. Some of them were not the correct ones, so the search went on, until there were no yellow questions marks in hardware.

Video: ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 1200.

Audio: High Definition Audio (Azalea).

Connectivity: 4-in-1 Card Reader (Memory Stick / MS PRO / SD / MMC).

MODEM on HD audio (or something like that). Modem Driver 2.1.63.0.zip (works for me, or try the newer Modem_Agere_new model_v.2175_XP.zip). Installation: Canceling hardware wizard; manually adding new hardware; modem; got my own disk; browse to unzipped folder for the „inf“ file. Most people probably won’t need a 56k modem in 21 century :).

Wi-Fi: AzureWave AW-GE780.

After all that it’s truly remarkable that the build-in webcam was recognized ;). However, here is the driver for Bison USB 2.0 webcam ALi5603D.

18.09.2008 update:

Found more useful info on a Spanish site: http://mx52.iespana.es/. The author says he used some drivers, same as MX67 model, and according to him they work for MX52 series too, but no guarantee. List: ATI Radeon Xpress 1200 video card drivers (no catalyst control center), ATI SMBus, Realtek High Definition Audio, Ricoh card reader, Realtek Lan, Atheros AR5007EG WiFi, AMD Turion 64×2 processors, Synaptics touchpad, Keyboard keys and functional (teclado y teclas funcionales), Bison USB 2.0 webcam ALi5603D. Also describes how to deal with the Windows XP (SP2 needed, I guess) hardware manager.

Another Spanish site, blog actually, with compressed (rar) drivers (Windows XP SP2) for Packard Bell EasyNote MX-52: http://kainita.no-ip.org/?page_id=821. She also suggest s program for the webcam called Debut Video Capture Software.

I am not so sure about both texts, but that’s the best I can understand using the google translator.

The Italian official Packard Bell support has some Windows XP tools – a LCT monitor test and Diagnostics for RAM, HDD & an ImageWriter.