Loads of missing drivers. <HELP>

Caliden

ok i have a HP T350 and i recently installed windows 2000 pro on it. but now there are several devices that were not automatically installed by windows and i dont know their specs so i cant search for drivers for them.
the hp offical site is next to useless as the T350 page is not working and they only deal in drivers for their own hardware.
Can any1 give me advice on what to do? i.e. should i do a factory restore on the comp and then find what drivers each device is using and put them on cd then reinstall win2k or is there anything else i can do?
i have tried using windows update but my system cant detect any


PLS HELP

BoB_BoT

if you have the factory restore cd, there might be a chance that the drivers are in folders in that cd (and not archived). better yet take a look here linky give the xp drivers a try, should work on 2k no prob. I just took a look at a quick note on the hp site, try inserting the backup disk into your drive, let it auto run and see if it gives the options to install your drivers.

gl,
Rob

Caliden

thx very much for your help but for some strange reason the link doesnt seem to work. i will try again after 6pm on the 56k

vibe666

the link works ok for me, so i guess it was just a glitch (maybe try copy pasting the link address into IE).

if you do a system restore you can go to www.driverguide.com and get the driverguide toolkit which will scan your system and save all the driver files for your hardware to a folder so you can back it up for future use and tell you exactly what the hardware is to help you search for noewer drivers.

handy little thing.

Caliden

ok i have narrowed it down to 4 things with no drivers.


PCI device
PCI simple communications controller
universal serial bus (USB) controller

and for some reason my conexant 56k modem isnt even detected.

im a complete noob when it comes to installing a new o/s and have no idea what those devices are even for.
should i try and do a factory restore and save the drivers or is thre some way of finding drivers for these devices somewhere?

vibe666

the USB device is likely to be your modem or one of the PCI ones if it's a PCI modem rather than USB (you didn't say).

you're almost there anyway.

you need to look at the things you have connected to your PC and see what is and isn't working.

you obviously have something plugged into a USB port that doesn't have drivers. if it's your modem then you need to get the right drivers for it, which you'll be able to find by lookling at the label on the thing and going to www.modemhelp.net and doing a search (also try www.driverguide.com if modemhelp doesn't get any results).

if not then you'll need to look on the USB device (whatever it is and track down the drivers accordingly. most of the time a google with the device name and driver after it will get you what you need.

same goes for the PCI stuff.

how many PCI cards do you have connected?

easy way is to look at the back of your PC at the part where the blanking plates are and seeing whats there. OK, so what do you have plugged in there? Sound cards? Modem? Network card? video card? anything else? some of these things may be on the motherboard, check what sockets you have on the motherboard and what you have in the PCI slots.

let me know what you find, and we'll see if we can't figure out whats what.

Caliden

ok i did a factory restore an everything is ok so 2mrw im going to install win2k again but leave win xp on comp , copy drivers on the d drive and then do wat u said about checking where everything is at the back and on the motherboard.

thanks for your help

BoB_BoT

what vibe666 means is that your graphics card and/or sound card may be onboard (this means that they are intergrated into your mainboard). If you look at the back of your case and look for slots that are there to expand to.



from the image you can see what I mean. If you have 3 slots take up (subtract one if you graphics card is installed ok and is not onboard) check the remaining cards to see what they are and what drivers you can get for them. But you should be ok once you have your drivers copied over.

unkel

Did you install SP4? I have found that can solve many hardware issues. Take out the hardware that is not recognised, install SP4 then put the hardware back in and reboot and run a windows update. That has helped me in the past

vibe666

nice pic there BoB_BoT!

would have dug up something similar, but i was pushed for time last night.

btw the driverguide toolkit is very handy when re-installing stuff because you can copy all your important driver files to a single folder and then when the time comes you don't have to mess around with installation routines for most hardware, it just picks the relevant files and installs them automatically without the extra junk.

PPC

Have a look at this aswell http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3908

can be handy if ya cant find out what something is and ya dont have the driver for it