I have an old laptop (not that old though since I purchased it on November 2010 last year) Compaq Presario CQ42, precisely CQ42-270TU.
Previously I installed a Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit architecture and I usually use it at home and office for my daily activities. To make it faster, I upgraded the RAM to 4GB.
Today I just installed the laptop with a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit architecture. I want to know, how will it look like? Will the all hardware drivers be installed by default? The most important thing is I want to start using 64-bit architecture operating system.
The result is every driver was installed by default except four kind of hardwares that you have to manually download and install the drivers. The four hardwares are the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500M, the Intel Management Engine Interface, the HP Quick Launch software, and the Realtek RTL8191SE 802.11b/g/n Wireless Adapter.
So if you own the Compaq CQ42-270TU and you want to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on the laptop, you have to manually install those drivers to make your laptop works properly.
To make it easy, here is a list of files you have to download:
1. Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500M; you can download it here.
2. Intel Management Engine Interface; grab it here.
3. HP Quick Launch; download it here.
4. Realtek RTL8191SE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter; download it here.
I hope this will be useful for you.