Dell refusing drivers

[Clearcut]

I have a Windows 7 DVD that I have installed on multiple PCs over the years, with most drivers etc included.

However, I have an old Dell PC (5050) that I have installed it on recently, where none of the main drivers are on the installation - particularly the USB and Ethernet drivers. I downloaded them all on another PC and copied them to disk. This didn't work. I put the hard drive in an external caddy and put them in a folder on the drive that way - no joy. I even tried another drive with a full Windows installation on it in the Dell. It booted to windows and threw up a few installing drivers messages but again all the drivers are missing in Device Manager. I just cannot get this thing updated to SP1 with no USB drive or Ethernet. The SP1 file that I put in the folder won't work either.

Have you any ideas why this thing will not install any drivers, do you have to play around with the BIOS?

 

[this_is_gav]

Are you connecting the caddy in the USB 3 ports? If so, try the USB 2.0 ports. Admittedly a long time ago but I don't think I saw Windows 7 not detecting and installing drivers for USB 2.0.

If that doesn't work you might need to make a new DVD with the USB and/or ethernet drivers injected in. I assume nLite will still do that.

Edit: Looking further, some were saying they had similar errors on a Dell Latitude with Windows 7 Enterprise. The solution they found was to partition the destination drive (a small ~100mb one should do - or add a HDD/SSD to the system temporarily if you have one lying around) and install the drivers from that partition.

 

[Clearcut]

Thank you.