OS downgrade, missing drivers

flogen

Hey all

Bit of an emergency that may keep Santa up all night - hoping you can help him out!

Got a laptop for my mam and decided to downgrade it to XP from Vista; I go through the process and install it all perfectly but now the various drivers seem to be missing.

There's a recovery partition but I can't find a scratch about drivers on it - I can't even find the WLAN or LAN drivers that would allow me to search online (instead I'm trying to download on my own PC and transfer them across - did so with what I thought were the WLAN drivers but they didn't work).

Anyone know what I can do or what I'm looking for? There wasn't even a recovery disc with the laptop which would probably solve my problems - that in itself strikes me as odd.

Thanks in advance - I've got a feeling my only option is trial and error but hopefully someone here might have a tip or two.

Kinetic^

Try downloading Cpu-Z. it will show you what hardware is on there.

yoyo

flogen wrote: »

Hey all

Bit of an emergency that may keep Santa up all night - hoping you can help him out!

Got a laptop for my mam and decided to downgrade it to XP from Vista; I go through the process and install it all perfectly but now the various drivers seem to be missing.

There's a recovery partition but I can't find a scratch about drivers on it - I can't even find the WLAN or LAN drivers that would allow me to search online (instead I'm trying to download on my own PC and transfer them across - did so with what I thought were the WLAN drivers but they didn't work).

Anyone know what I can do or what I'm looking for? There wasn't even a recovery disc with the laptop which would probably solve my problems - that in itself strikes me as odd.

Thanks in advance - I've got a feeling my only option is trial and error but hopefully someone here might have a tip or two.

What laptop is it including model? What wireless adaptor is it using or do you know?

Nick

MunsterCycling

If you want help you will have to tell us what the laptop is!!!

papu

bit silly to downgrade , could give the tech support a call but they will most likely give you the run around .

yoyo

papu wrote: »

bit silly to downgrade , could give the tech support a call but they will most likely give you the run around .

Agreed, I don't see why people have a problem with Vista, Ironically a good install is allot more stable than a XP one...

Nick

321654

Leave Vista for a week. It might grow on you.

Most of the Vista hating (i hated it at first too) is just that its a change to them. When you try it out for a while you get to like it.

flogen

Thanks for the help... completely forgot to reference the make!

It's an EiSystems 1412 (from Currys - think it's one of their own labels like the Advents so it's probably a re-badge of something else). The WLAN seems to be a Realtek RTL8187B WLAN adaptor but the drivers from the Realtek site don't seem to work... yet anyway. (the PC can see the adaptor but doesn't recognise what it is - I tried to update the drivers and point it to the folder I downloaded but it wasn't playing nice at all).

As for my reasons for the downgrade, I did so because my Mam is handy enough on the computer but only familiar with XP. In my limited experience using Vista I had a hard time getting to grips with it so I'd imagine she'd be the same and for the limited functionality she uses it wasn't worth the hassle... besides, it was a Vista Basic install on a lappy with 1GB RAM - I'd rather downgrade and have more than enough RAM than keep it at a bastardised version of an awkward OS and have just enough RAM to run things smoothly.

Funny enough the only disc packaged seems to be an MS Works install - not even a Vista recovery disc. In other words I can't go back up to Vista even if I wanted to (and I don't tbh).

Thanks again for any help

MunsterCycling

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=1&Level=6&Conn=5&ProdID=143&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true

Can you confirm if you downloaded the drivers from this page?

Namely this one:
ftp://202.65.194.212/cn/wlan/RTL8187B_5_6.1135.0625.2008_Silent_Install.zip

flogen

MunsterCycling wrote: »

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=1&Level=6&Conn=5&ProdID=143&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true

Can you confirm if you downloaded the drivers from this page?

Namely this one:
ftp://202.65.194.212/cn/wlan/RTL8187B_5_6.1135.0625.2008_Silent_Install.zip

I managed somehow to download the drivers for the wrong WLAN card at first - got them on the second go. Thanks.

It's still saying there's a PCI adaptor, Ethernet controller and Video Controller (VGA compatible) that's unrecognised.

The sound card doesn't seem to be working either - so I'm looking for video and audio drivers... all I can find out about the card is that it's by SiS; very little else (besides the graphics interface being AGP Version 3.0).

CPU-Z and PC Wizard are coming in quite handy, though, hopefully I'll have this cracked soon enough.

Any more suggestions are greatly appreciated and all your help so far is too.

Thanks again.

Kinetic^

Good chance you haven't drivers for your SM Bus controller installed. Can you throw up a printsreen of each of the tabs from Cpu-Z?

flogen

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Good chance you haven't drivers for your SM Bus controller installed. Can you throw up a printsreen of each of the tabs from Cpu-Z?

Sure thing.

One of the devices listed as 'other' seems to be the SiS649, but I can't find anything in the way of drivers for it.

The other device seems to be relating to the graphics card - have found drivers but not sure if they're the right ones; no joy with them yet anyway.

MunsterCycling

Did you try this one? Graphics:

http://www.sis.com/download/agreement.php?id=155871&url=download_step1.php?id=155871

MC

AlmightyCushion

A piece of software called everest helped me out before when I was looking for drivers before. Without it that piece of crap would probably still have no audio or ethernet drivers on it. Give it a try.

flogen

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Did you try this one? Graphics:

http://www.sis.com/download/agreement.php?id=155871&url=download_step1.php?id=155871

MC

Yeah, I've tried that one and it doesn't seem to have done anything.

Thanks for your help.

Two down, two to go, though.

One is a 'PCI Device' the other is a 'Video Controller (VGA Compatible)'.

My sound isn't working on the device so I can only assume one of these two will take care of that when fixed.

karasu

I would try DriverMax

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

It's handy software, that recognize your drivers and hardware and let you download them and install without struggle

Just remember to backup your drivers

flogen

karasu wrote: »

I would try DriverMax

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

It's handy software, that recognize your drivers and hardware and let you download them and install without struggle

Just remember to backup your drivers

Wow.

That's an impressive bit of software - it found and resolved the two outstanding issues in double quick time. Amazing stuff!

I'd been avoiding downloading these 'driver finding' programmes as a lot of them looked a bit iffy; thanks for pointing me to a legit one.

And thanks to everyone who helped out in this debacle - you all really did save Christmas (and my life)!

Thanks again.

MunsterCycling

Yeaaaaaaaa........


Glad you got it.....

(goes off to try drivermax..... Feck thats cool, (wonders why he never tried that before))

MC

AlmightyCushion

Also happy to see you got it. Finding drivers can be one of the most painful parts of doing a re-install especially on older systems or like in your case a re-badge.

@karasu - That drivermax program is brilliant. So much better than everest. Cheers, man. It's a pity I can't thank you 10 times for that post.

seanybiker

Hmm must try out driver max now , he seems sound