Well, I hate Vista and instead installed XP Pro on the laptop and I've got 90% of the proper drivers loaded for this laptop, sound, video, HP quick buttons, webcamera, wireless LAN. The problems I am having have to do with 3 "Base System Device" lines, Ethernet Controller, and Modem. I can't find the drivers for LAN/Modem that work and I have absolutely no clue what the base system devices are (unless they're chipset things... I dont know if the intel inf update utility was for actual drivers or not) for me to look for drivers for it. does anyone have any idea what I'm missing? Thank you for any help in this matter!

Vista.

Chances are you won't get the proper XP drivers for those components because some hardware manufacturers have stopped creating XP drivers for new hardware.

You should find everything you need in here. It's based on my guide which is somewhere around here so you should be fine.

Scirwode