Thank you for the information. Greatly appreciated.
Though, I will kindly say that I am fairly up to speed with some of the things you mentioned.
I did not know that HP cards were rebranded Intels. This is good to know!
I know to do a direct driver install on most things. I have slipstreamed drivers on my install discs with Nlite. I would just do drivers, then decide after an Install to do any software stuff. Though sometimes, it would seem, I have little choice when some drivers are completely wrapped in an executable.
I will remember and consider the Vista driver approach. My dad, when I lived at my childhood home, had a printer where I used Vista drivers on my XP64 machine for proper install.
Do you suppose though, that I could simply use the Server 2003 driver set, as seen here?
https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_d596c15cd1db4241b736c8856b
Yes, HP is bloatware supreme.
As I am on XP64, though do have XP32 as a dual boot reserve backup, I intend to collect both sets of drivers and install them appropriately.