What's going on?

Boojak · 02 Nov 2009

A few years ago, I've built me a computer and installed Vista 64 bit. During that time, I had some issues installing the OS. The installation hanging, for example. That's because I had to load the SATA 64 BIT drivers during the installation of Vista. The nForce 520 chipset (or ALivenF5-esata2+) manual book told me to use the Support CD to install other necessary drivers when the OS installation is done. Have done that, everything went alright.

Okay, so yesterday, I've formatted my harddrive where Vista was held and was going to install Windows 7 64 BIT. At the time, I thought I had to do the same process as I did with Vista; loading the SATA drivers. When I tried to load the driver, an error prompted stating "This driver is not Windows 7 supported". Blah, blah, blah.

After googling for a bit, I've found out that there are new drivers on the nVidia website BUT those drivers are for nForce 550+ or higher. Mine is only 520. I then tried to look for any alternative, and I came across this:

"There's no need to load the SATA drivers, your chipset is already included in the Windows 7 installation."

What? So, I did it. Installed Windows 7 successfully without loading the SATA drivers.

During Vista's times, I was told to use the support CD to install other drivers after the installation. But I'm not sure now if I really need to repeat that process, as I have installed 7 without installing any drivers (except my video card ones.)

I have no problem with Vista as of yet. Installed the latest Windows updates and optional things (including my video card driver.)

I looked at Device Manager and I don't see any yellow mark...

This is confusing!

Minotar · 02 Nov 2009

You should be able to leave them be,but just incase,in device manager click update software and have a look see.

You upgraded your software last time so im guessing it carried over.
Dan

Tews · 02 Nov 2009

You could try uninstalling some drivers so you have some yellow triangles, but then you might think you're back in vista again...Windows 7, its that easy...

Boojak · 02 Nov 2009

Minotar said:

You should be able to leave them be,but just incase,in device manager click update software and have a look see.

You upgraded your software last time so im guessing it carried over.
Dan

I didn't upgrade from Vista to 7. Only did a full install.

So, it seems that Windows 7 include certain drivers, unlike Vista ...

Barman58 · 02 Nov 2009

Time goes on :)

The driver set in Windows 7 is vastly superior to that included with Vista.

If you have very old hardware you may find that Vista included support but Windows 7 does not, that is to be expected. in most cases, with hardware of a reasonable age Windows 7 will support far more than Vista did out of the box.

A prime example of this is the generic bluetooth adaptors that needed specieal software and drivers - the vast majority of these now "just work"

Boojak · 02 Nov 2009

Thank you for clearing this confusion up! Appreciate it!