HP Fansite

Hard disk protection ProtectSmart for HP Pavilion dv2

After extensive searches for a working driver for the HP Pavilion dv2 running Windows 7, 64-bit, I’ve finally found it! This driver from HP (for Windows Vista and Windows 7, 32 and 64 bit) allows the dv2′s ProtectSmart hard disk protection feature to work properly. I’ve downloaded many, many, many ProtectSmart and 3D Drive Guard drivers from HP, including the one from the Pavilion dv2′s “Windows Vista drivers” page… but none seem to work with a HP Pavilion dv2 running Windows 7 (not HP’s fault, since Windows 7 hasn’t even gone mainstream yet!). All of them indicate “Active” status when installed, though when you lift the notebook up or suddenly ‘drop’ it to the ground (holding it with your hands and not actually hitting the floor of course), the hard disk continues to run and the ‘red light’ indicator doesn’t come on. Yet this one specific driver above appears to be the only one that works at the moment! Yay.

So if you’re a HP Pavilion dv2 owner and planning to/already installed Windows 7 on your notebook, hit that download link for a copy of the driver that actually works on your notebook/OS combo!

Windows 7 + AMD Athlon Neo = Win!

Windows 7 Quick Scan is super-fast even on a HP Pavilion dv2!

Updated with a screenshot from the Pavilion dv2′s Windows Action Center/Windows Defender

Me and a friend have been testing the HP Pavilion dv2 ultra-portable notebook PC (featuring AMD’s Athlon Neo single-core processor and 512 MB of ATI graphics) for several weeks now and honestly, it rocks. Despite having an anemic-sounding 1.6 GHz processor, this thing runs like a champ. HP dv2: A typical Windows Defender scan of its 250 GB hard disk on Windows 7 takes about two minutes! In contrast, my HP Mini running Windows Vista with a 160 GB disk takes 30 to 40 minutes for Windows Defender to do an equivalent scan.

And let’s not even get started on how the Pavilion dv2 can run modern games (like Left4Dead and Call of Duty 5) on 1280 x 800 resolution (albeit at low settings, but extremely smooth frame rates)… I’ll talk about that in a few days’ time once I get some benchmark numbers.

I’ve been running AVG Free alongside the built-in Windows firewall for Vista (and recently, Windows 7) since 2007 and my system is always clean. Yup, Windows is quite secure as long as you’re visiting ‘good’ websites!