Fresh reinstall of win 7 64 bit

Four of a kind

Doing my first reinstall on my machine. I've a basic knowledge of what needs to be done.

I've all my important stuff backed up.

What I would like to know is where do I go in order to reinstall all my drivers once I've it completed?

I can't remember what there a one stop shop for everything or do I have to manually go and get each one. How do I find out what drivers I'll actually need as I can't remember that either.

mp22

If you format the drive you will need to goto device manager and check what devices are not working.If you dont format the drive you will find a folder called windows.old on you c drive when you are done,all the drivers you need would be in ,windows.old-windows-system32.

Four of a kind

mp22 wrote: »

If you format the drive you will need to goto device manager and check what devices are not working.If you dont format the drive you will find a folder called windows.old on you c drive when you are done,all the drivers you need would be in ,windows.old-windows-system32.

Yes I'm formatting the drive completely. Thanks for the reply.

Capt'n Midnight

do you have physical media to had

also check if there is a restore image on the machine already

mp22

A sneaky short cut is to copy the winsys32 folder to a usb drive.if you cant find the driver you need there will be one on the usb drive.

Four of a kind

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

do you have physical media to had

also check if there is a restore image on the machine already

Newbie here so could you point me in the right direction on how to check this out?

GreenWolfe

Four of a kind wrote: »

Newbie here so could you point me in the right direction on how to check this out?

You may have one or more of the following:

1. Pressed restore discs that were provided with the laptop.
2. Self-burned restore discs - many computers now come without the first option and prompt you to burn a set of restore discs on first boot-up.
3. A recovery partition on the HDD - you may get an option to restore on boot-up, or you may be able to start the process from Windows.

Reamer Fanny

Post Windows 7 install there might be one or two drivers that haven't been installed (driver not available on the installation disc).

Usually I just get the network adapter driver and the rest are downloaded automatically - you may need a second computer to download it.

Basically in devices manager look for devices with an exclamation mark, these are the devices that windows was unable to find drivers for.

To find them manually right-click the device and go to properties, and find driver details click on hardware ids and you'll notice a string like ven_xxxx dev_xxxx.

On the second computer head on over to pcidatabase.com and search for the vendor number (ven) this will tell you the manufacturer, and then search device id (dev). If your device is found there will be a link to the driver, just copy this to USB stick and install on the target computer.

Overheal

mp22 wrote: »

A sneaky short cut is to copy the winsys32 folder to a usb drive.if you cant find the driver you need there will be one on the usb drive.

Im kissing you in cyberspace. I don't care how wrong it is. Good tip!

mp22

Overheal wrote: »

Im kissing you in cyberspace. I don't care how wrong it is. Good tip!

:o:o:eek:

Four of a kind

I'm going to go ahead and get a new HDD, as I think its on the brink of failure.

Can ye recommend a specific make of hdd to look at? It's my first time to go down this route so any help would be great.

mp22

desktop pc http://www.dabs.ie/category/components-and-storage,hard-drives,internal-hard-drives/11154-42730000

laptop http://www.dabs.ie/category/components-and-storage,hard-drives,internal-hard-drives/11154-41580000

Personally I would keep away from Seagate drives after that you pay's your money and takes your chance's.

Four of a kind

Thanks.

Ok, so I get a new hdd.

I take out old one, put in the new one and reinstall wins from dvd? Is that the order? Or do I format the hdd in disk manager before I install windows?

Sorry for the rock bottom questions lads. I've never done a reinstall before so I'd just like to get the right steps.

I'm getting a new hdd tomorrow.

Could I hook it up the new one beside the old one and format it in disk management and then take out the old Hdd, and reinstall win 7 from dvd onto new hdd?

mp22

In with new hd boot from windows dvd,if you want partitions wait till you have windows installed and then use the disk manager to set them up.

silentbutnice

mp22 wrote: »

In with new hd boot from windows dvd,if you want partitions wait till you have windows installed and then use the disk manager to set them up.

Thanks.

I don't want partitions so ill just put new hdd in with old one and boot from dvd. I can then take out old hdd or I do that at the very start? I'll all my stuff backed up from it.

mp22

Just have the new hd in, then when windows is installed connect up the old one.If they are both in windows will boot from the old drive all the time.

Four of a kind

mp22 wrote: »

A sneaky short cut is to copy the winsys32 folder to a usb drive.if you cant find the driver you need there will be one on the usb drive.

One last question - I can't seem to locate this folder on my machine?

I would think this would be very handy to locate my drivers, rather than having to manually to looking for individual ones.

Just can't seem to find it on my pc.

Reamer Fanny

Four of a kind wrote: »

One last question - I can't seem to locate this folder on my machine?

I would think this would be very handy to locate my drivers, rather than having to manually to looking for individual ones.

Just can't seem to find it on my pc.

Assuming Windows is installed to the C drive, the path would be "C:\Windows\System32"