Filed under: Clean Up Computer
I am about to reinstall Windows XP on my home computer. Any program that will scan my hardware for drivers?
January 15, 2011
2 thoughts on “I am about to reinstall Windows XP on my home computer. Any program that will scan my hardware for drivers?”
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Clean Registry and Optimize PC
Download double driver.
You run the program before you format and it pulls all your drivers to a flash drive or whatever
After you reinstall XP you run double driver again and it reinstalls all your drivers.
Did it last time I had to reformat and worked great and best of all it’s freeware
Windows Update will do a pretty good job of finding common hardware and offering drivers for it in the "optional updates" category, however you will need a network driver installed before you can use it.
I assume that this computer has built-in network, since most do these days. Install the network driver from the motherboard cd (along with the chipset drivers), then let Windows Update do the rest of the work for you.
If device manager shows any problems, you will have to download the drivers for any odd hardware fromth manufacturer site.
There are programs that will pull your current drivers from a machine so that you can reload them after a reinstall. The problem with this is that it is normally one of these drivers that is causing the problem that is making you decide to reinstall.
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If you have the motherboard driver cd, (your friend may have put it in the motherboard box and given you that with all the spare parts, manuals, and warranties in it… that’s pretty standard practice) it will have drivers for all the common versions of Windows on it. If you don’t, you can download it from the manufacturers site. I recommend this, because although Windows Update will give you enough stuff to make the computer work, the drivers they supply for motherboards normally skip some additional functionality that the manufacturers cd will include.
As a side note, Windows 7 is going to be available in a couple of months. It’s the same core as Vista, but it is much more capable. It’s what Vista should have been. Also, if it is software compatibility that concerns you, Windows 7 has a Windows XP emulation mode that will allow you to run XP software that wouldn’t otherwise work (including drivers for old hardware). You might just want to wait.