okay i just reformatted my brothers pc and only after formating and reloading windows do i discover he has either thrown out or lost all his driver discs. is there anyway i can find out what brand or whatever all his hardware is so i can get the drivers for it? or just for the Ethernet card so i can get on the internet and then use internet function to get the drivers for the rest of the hardware?

thanks in advance

If you have another computer (I assume you do, since youre here) go to the motherboard's manufacture's website, and download the driver pack for that specific motherboard. Then transfer the package to the clean computer using a USB drive or something similar.

Go into the Device Manager, find all the devices with a yellow question mark/exclamation point on them, double click the device, go to the details tab, then select Hardware Ids. You'll see a bunch of weird codes. For instance, a PCI device would come up with some code like PCI\VEN_3424&DEV_3242&SUBSYS_5425232. This is a Vendor code, and a device code for that hardware. If you google the string, atleast to the end of the DEV code, you should get some results, as to what drivers are needed for that hardware.

I suppose I can do a real world example:

I have a NIC, with a hardware Ids of . I google that and get nothing. I then delete much of the stuff at the end, and google: The first site is from drivershq.com, and it says the driver for Ralink PCI RT 2760 2790 2860 2890 wireless NIC will work for my hardware. I can then go to Ralinks website and download the dirver. However, I go there, and see that there's different drivers for their 2760/2790, and 2860/2890. If I go back and look that that hardware Ids, I'll see under the SUBSYS string, that it says 2860. I don't think that's a coincidence, so I go and download the 2860 drivers.

Keep in mind that your hardware might be mentioned in some forums, that come up as search results. These results can be useful, and you shouldn't discount them when doing this procedure.

manufacturer's website of all components, save all downloads and burn on cd.. you never know when you gotta do it again.

okay so i got the id. its


pci\ven_10de&dev_0057

but so far haven't had much luck in finding a driver for it

the motherboard is
gigabyte s series m55sli-s4 (rev.2.0)

That device appears to be your wired ethernet drivers. Go here, and download the drivers. If there's still any more unknown devices, post the vendor and device IDs here again.

if your copy of windows is genuine just run windows update. its should search for the drivers automatically.

if its not genuine, there are ways to make it genuine.

Thanks im downloading them now. fingers crossed they work and my brother learns his lesson not to loose his driver dics.


fined_mind
if your copy of windows is genuine just run windows update. its should search for the drivers automatically.

if its not genuine, there are ways to make it genuine.

Yeah i know but the problem there is theres no driver fore the ethernet card so cant do windows update. :S thx though

Download a program called driver detective.. unless you want to pay the free version doesn't let you dl but it tells what the driver is and from there you can google the drivers you need.. trust me its how i saved myself

i'm gonna have to go with the driver detective i think. the drives from the manufactures website still didn't work