I installed ultimate and other than not having Aero, it runs very well. The only problem cropped up when I stopped using the external monitor and wanted to use my laptop panel instead, the drivers don't seem to work with it!
At first, Vista didn't recognize the card, but an update installed MS MR9000 drivers which work fine with my external monitor, but the internal panel is completely out of phase with horizontal and vertical distortion. I did a search on Google and found out many people have the same problem. Has anyone had similar issues here and found a work around?
I know this laptop is old, but its still pretty good for a lot of stuff, and other than the video issues, Vista actually runs great on it. I wanted to use it as a media center for my TV.
It seems like some change in the ATI drivers conflicts with the LCD Display for that laptop. That was evident even in XP if modded catalyst drivers newer than 5.6 were installed. My guess is that you won't be able to find a driver old enough to run on Vista. I won't say it's a lost cause, but it's probably pretty damn close.
I'm currently running drivers for nc4000 (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=321835&prodNameId=321837&swEnvOID=1093&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=PSG_I23133-108006 (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=321835&prodNameId=321837&swEnvOID=1093&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=PSG_I23133-108006).
It's the only driver that lets me put nx7010 in sleep, hibernation and use external projector, TV and rest.
I have better experience with them than with Omega or drivers for x1000.
Unpack and upgrade driver manually - from computer management.
Wish you good luck.
So far I've had great success running the Microsoft drivers on my LCD TV, of course the laptop panel still distorts, but the external monitor works like a champ. In fact Vista Media Center looks gorgeous and even shows all the animations. No idea why the internal screen distorts so badly.
I installed an older HP driver (manual install) and that got the internal panel to work perfectly, however media center looked horrible as no graphics appeared, so I got rid of that driver as I use this laptop primarily as a media center to stream media to my living room.