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General discussion

driver installation

Oct 24, 2004 10:51PM PDT

Hello

How can I install sound card, video card, and the modem drivers in WinXP?

Thanks!

Discussion is locked

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Re: driver installation
Oct 24, 2004 11:04PM PDT

Are you talking about updated drivers you downloaded from the various mfr websites or are you talking about original drivers? If original drivers, you would use the motherboard cd if your hardware is on-board rather than separate cards internally, or you use the original installation cd's that came with the hardware.

If the downloaded updated drivers, most of them are either in .zip format so you have to extract the files first to a separate folder on your harddrive, then go to Device Mgr, click the device, choose Properties/Drivers/Update drivers and have windows look inside the folder you created with the extracted files.

If the file you downloaded is an .exe type file, you can usually just click it and it will install automatically. However, for video, you usually have to change the display adapter to be generic VGA drivers so that windows 'lets go' of the drivers that are already installed.

TONI

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Re: driver installation
Oct 24, 2004 11:05PM PDT

First off, Do you have installation discs for the sound card, video card, and modem?
If you do, it should just be a matter of putting the discs in and just follow the directions (as long as you have "auto-run" on for your cd drive)
If you do not have the CD's for these devices and they are all installed from the factory (from Dell, Gateway, etc...) then all the drivers are on the resource CD's that came with your system.(the CD's should have information on the CD itself telling you what is on each Disc.) You might have to dig around in the CD contents sometimes to find them, but they should all be there. Just find the drivers for your particular cards and extract them to the folder specified when clicking the extract button. From there it should just be a matter of following along with the set-up program that runs.

Hope this helps

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Re: driver installation
Oct 25, 2004 12:09AM PDT

Thanks, TONI H and loren!

I just downloaded from the manufacturer websites all the drivers needed for WinXP but I am not sure how to install them into my pc. In fact, the drivers for the sound card, video card, and the modem now installed came from the WinXP installation cd and they are all working properly. But what I need now is to install the correct drivers for them but how?

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Re: driver installation...actually
Oct 25, 2004 12:26AM PDT

the XP drivers database has covered your hardware pretty well if it's installed the correct drivers and everything is working. Even though those drivers from XP might be slightly on the 'old' side, I would continue to use them for now as long as you aren't experiencing any problems.

Now.....if you have installed or decide to install SP2, you might run into a glitch with hardware drivers so what you downloaded, if already updated for SP2, would serve you well for reinstalling anything you run into issues with. If you have a cd burner program, here's what I would do with your downloaded drivers.

First determine if the file is already a self-executable (and .exe file that doesn't need to be extracted) or if it's a .zip file type that will need to be extracted.

Once you know the file type you are dealing with, you can create folders on your desktop for each of the three files, and drag them to their respective folders. Now either leave the .exe files alone inside those folders, or now unzip (extract) the .zip file types to that folder. Once you have what you need, burn all three folders to a cdr type media and mark the cd that they are drivers for these three devices, including the version numbers and dates.

Put the cd somewhere safe so that if you need to install or reinstall those drivers, you won't have to hunt them down again and you can either install right from the cd (clicking the .exe file types) or browsing to that folder where the extracted .zip files are located by using the Device Mgr/Properties/Drivers/Update Driver option for each device.

TONI

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Re: driver installation...actually
Oct 25, 2004 9:02AM PDT

Hi TONI H,

Nice explanation. One more thing, so I don't have to remove or uninstall the previous installed drivers...

Thanks!