HP Pavilion 6535 Audio Drivers Page

Things went great up until I started to install the sound driver. Everything except that was still working very nicely. I was surprised, given HP's track record (in my experiences) of making there hardware the most painful thing (short of a root canal) to set up and configure.

I went to HP's web site to try and get the driver, but I couldn't find it. I was a little surprised by that, but I figured that I would just call them and find out. The first time I called, I was told rather rudely that no one could answer questions about the machine since it was out of warranty. So I called again to a different department and got a very polite woman who told me that although she wasn't really supposed to do so, that she would look the computer's configuration up. She came back and said that there was nothing except "Crystal Sound System" listed under "Sound System". I thanked her, hung up, and double checked the website. Sure enough, that was all there was. So I called a third time, expecting that maybe I'd find someone who knew something about these machines. Didn't happen. Got another rude woman on the phone, and she basically told me off, and said that all these computers (of the same model #) could have different configurations, so that was all they could say. I wasn't being rude, so I didn't know why, but I lost it and shot back with "If you don't know what you put into the computers, you've got no business selling them." Probably didn't help much, but it made me feel better.

Anyway, after a lot of looking (DriverGuide and Windrivers were of no help at all) I finally found the drivers at Cirrus Logic's web site. The chip (for those who wonder) is a Crystal CS4299 chip...something that initially threw me for a loop, since I was looking for a Crystal/Cirrus sound chip, but this chip is considered by them to be a "codec" chip and (although it functions as a soundcard with no other parts needed according to their literature) it is not a sound chip by their definition, just an audio decoding device.

As a closing note, I'd always heard it said by many repair techs that HP had no business selling computers. After having dealt with burnt out proprietary power supplies, their lack of support for older machines, and now this little episode, I now have to agree that HP has no business selling computers. For any reason.