DISCLAIMER:I am in no way responsible for any damage you might do to your nice N3390 for following these guidelines. They worked for me, but it is entirely your responsibility for what you do with your computer. DO NOT whine to me if your computer fries.
NOTE: I do not own that computer anymore. You are free to ask me questions, but I´m not sure I´ll be able to give you answers.
HP Pavilion N3390
Installing Windows 2000 was easy. I just reformated the HD with NTFS support, and followed the installation guidelines.
After installing Windows 2000, the first boot up gave me a 640x480 VGA screen, no sound support, no modem support, and the touch-pad only worked as a regular mouse (no nifty features avalaible).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Be aware that if you do not have an ethernet connection and a card supported out of the box by Windows 2000, you will not have access to the internet to download the needed drivers to configure Windows 2000, so download them first and put them in floppies, if necessary.
First was to install the graphics adapter card drivers. You can download them here or here.
After installing them, now I had to install the sound and modem drivers. This was the hardest part. First, I could not find them anywhere, even there were not at ESS's home page. Second, I was looking for sound drivers and modem drivers (2 sets), but the drivers are packaged as if we were talking about only one device (ESS Maestro-3.comm package). You can download it from my own page here. Once you get this package be sure to put it in a safe place, for me it was REALLY hard to find it on the web.
The easiest part of the whole Windows 2000 installation and configuration was to install the touchpad nifty features. Visit Synaptics and download the driver.
The volume, mute, contrast, and power functions included in the keyboard worked perfectly under Windows 2000.
The DVD worked out of the box. However, it came with region protection features (you can only switch regions up to 5 times). Fortunately, there is a page called The Firmware Page where you can download a new patched firmware to free your DVD device. BE AWARE THAT PATCHING YOUR DVD´S FIRMWARE MAY LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER IN A COMA. DO NOT TRY AND DO IT UNLESS YOU ARE SURE OF WHAT YOU´RE DOING!!!! On the other hand, the DVD software player that came with HP would not run under Windows 2000, so I had to get one that runs under Windows 2000 (in fact, software decoding gives better quality under Windows 2000 than under Windows 98).
Now I enjoy a fully functional HP Pavilion N3390 running Windows 2000 (if it wouldn't just crash from time to time... but that is MS's fault, not HP's)