Reinstallation of windows missing drivers problem

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 21:29

Hello apologies first off as i know very little of what i'm doing...

I've had the same installation of windows xp SP3 on my dell dimension 5150 for the last four years and wanted a clean install. I created a windows boot disc and successfully installed windows on a 2nd HD. However, the following drivers are missing (including the ethernet controller which is preventing me from going online to find the correct driver). The following drivers are missing...

Ethernet controller
PCI device
JM bus controller
Video controller
Video controller (VGA compatible)

my computers spec (don't laugh!):

Pentium (R) 4 CPU 3.20 GHz
3.19 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM

Any suggestions?

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 21:59

I tried to do this recently using my other HD, i downloaded some drivers from the dell website but when i go to the device manager and click to reinstall a particular driver, they do not appear in the folders where they are stored; it can't find them.

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 22:10

they come down as exe files, so do i just double click them once they are on my other install?

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 22:14

sweet, so double clicking the exe will send the drivers to where they need to go without going through the device manager?

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 22:21

great will give it a go. Thanks for all the quick responses! cheers

Jimpowers79 · 18 Feb 2010 at 23:54

Hello again,

I managed to install all the drivers accept for the ethernet controller... will check dell site again, but couldn't find a driver for this. What would it come under?

would this be it?...

Conexant D850 56K V.9X PCI DF Modem ULD

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 00:10

Thanks SiriusB, will try it out.
Will hopefully post from my other drive....!

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 00:46

Nice on that sorted it!

just another question if i may? Is it possible to have two harddrives connected, each having a windows startup? Would the other hd's content be accessible from the other?

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 00:49

That's great. Thanks for the advice SiriusB.

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 10:56

I connected the other HDD using a spare data cable in the remaining slot on the motherboard, and attached the spare power cable shared with the old HDD. However, when i boot (in the BIOS it is set to boot from the old drive) the new drive is not visible on my computer. Have i done something wrong with the installation of the drive?

Could it be due to differences in file system type? my old drive is NTFS, if the other drive were different would this cause the problem?

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 11:25

Hi, i checked the disk management. it displays three volumes of what i assume are the same drive (my old drive), i guess these are the partitions on my old drive?

63 MB FAT
3.00 GB FAT32
145.95 GB NTFS

I guess the other drive isn't showing, will check in BIOS to see if the other port is active.
Cheers for the reply.

Jimpowers79 · 19 Feb 2010 at 12:12

yeah that was the issue, the default setting for the number 1 drive was on, but i must have changed it at some point in the past. Cheers for all the help!