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General discussion

Windows 7 doesn't properly detect motherboard

Nov 3, 2010 12:36PM PDT

I have been running Win XP with a Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi motherboard for the last several months. I just upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit. The computer boots fine and has assigned some generic driver to my onboard video card instead of properly identifying it as an nvidia. I believe the entire motherboard may have been misidentified. Trying to install the drivers from nvidia doesn't work. The setup just says it can't find any supported hardware and exits. I have tried a couple of versions with no difference in results. The device manager does not show any graphics cards, so I can't even try to select a driver manually. I have tried installing drivers from the original motherboard disc, and the latest from Zotac's website.

If anyone has ideas on possible solutions I would appreciate them.

Thanks

Discussion is locked

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Not my field
Nov 3, 2010 9:04PM PDT
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Re: Not my field
Nov 4, 2010 12:31AM PDT

Thanks for the response. I have tried the 32 bit Win 7 drivers from Zotac, but they unfortunately did not help. According to their release notes, the BIOS updates are all unrelated to the issues I am seeing. However, I did update to their latest release back when I was still running on Win XP.

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This sounds like you are
Nov 4, 2010 1:09AM PDT

It sounds like you are trying to install video card drivers. In both your posts I read nothing about the motherboard chipset drivers.

In closing, Windows in all its versions has done poorly at detecting hardware. Not much changed over the years since Windows 1.0
Bob

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Re: This sounds like you are
Nov 4, 2010 1:31AM PDT

Agreed. Unfortunately, in my case it appears they have gotten worse at detecting hardware since I was running fine under XP. My goal is to just get the video hardware recognized and running properly. I didn't mention the chipset drivers specifically, but I did try installing them from disc and from Zotac's site.

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Second hurdle.
Nov 4, 2010 1:51AM PDT

"I just upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit."

I've found upgrades to fail like that. This is why I never give upgrades much hope. If the owner really wants to try it, go ahead but clean installs seem to be the only way.

At 50 bucks for a hard drive I find that to be the cheap exit for testing if the clean install will work.
Bob