pre-installing chipset drivers a good thing?  

Slightly more clear now.

I guess we differ on the importance of drivers. I don't obsess over updating them. If my hardware works well, I leave well enough alone and don't update. If I have hardware problems, then I might consider drivers as a possible solution. Otherwise, I ignore them. I feel the same way about BIOS updates.

I tried DriverMax several years ago and gave up on it. Can't recall why, but ultimately it didn't prove worthwhile.

If your method works well for you, keep using it.

yeah, i like having things perfect

We only have to sweat preinstalling mobo drivers on XP which doesn't have any SATA drivers before SP's and only some afterwards. Win7 already has all mobo drivers in the installer.

I'm going to say it is reduntant and not necessary, especially for Intel chipsets. I don't think it will hurt anything, but you'll need to rerun the installer after Windows 7 is installed anyway, to get the rest of the drivers. If you pre-install them, you are only installing the controller drivers, and that's it.

Driver programs made mistakes regularly in XP and seemed to do even worse with Win7, which is inexcusable since Microsoft has all the drivers and vets them closely in WHQLabs around the world. I think this is why most of us let go of Driver Programs during Win7 beta while rolling our eyes.

Sometimes if you have a newer driver available on the manufacturer's Support Downloads webpage there is a reason why Microsoft has held it back from installer or Updates, perhaps a graphics driver that interfered with smooth suspend or resume as I've confirmed a lot here.

I had the chance to ask a MS scientist in the WHQL lab in Seattle during a tour at the MVP conference how confident they are that 7 drivers are current and he replied "Very confident." That they helped pay the manufacturer for building many of these drivers directly to is no small part of that, I'm sure.

ignatzatsonic said:

As far as I know, a motherboard usually has ONE set of chipset drivers, not multiple sets.

Not to sound like I'm nitpicking, but I usually refer to them as chipset drivers as well. I only use Intel chipsets, and the installer actually includes several drivers for my boards, not just one driver per board, or per chipset. There are quite a few hardware resources that get driver updates from that one, unified file. I also have USB 3.0 drivers for some boards, and the drivers for my controllers as well to use the iaStore driver instead of the msahci driver for my SSDs.

ignatzatsonic said:

Preinstalling???

As far as I know, the best practice is to install chipset drivers immediately after Windows, before any other drivers.

I second that motion!! That's the way I do it.

You can't install the proper Video drivers unless the motherboard has the chipset drives installed.

Of Course Microsoft Engineers would say that. They are AROGANT and CLUELESS.

Hence their blind ignorance that "Automatically Detect Settings" in LAN Connection settings under Internet Explorer works. It actually Does not work and I've been telling them that since Windows 95.

Also the "Hide Extensions for Known File Types". I've been telling them that this option is responsible for viruses being spread. Loses that write viruses have been exploiting that since 1995 too.

dondreak said:

I second that motion!! That's the way I do it.

You can't install the proper Video drivers unless the motherboard has the chipset drives installed.

This is a Windows 7 forum. XP rules don't apply here.

Many of us have been with 7 since beta release and have literally hundreds of installs so know what happens under all conditions.

All but a few drivers are in the installers or delivered via optional Updates.

dondreak said:

Of Course Microsoft Engineers would say that. They are AROGANT and CLUELESS.

"Experts" with six posts with misspelled screaming in them are easy to discount. Be nice or or you'll be gone in a blink.

MS Engineers earned the right to be listened to when they created the best OS ever.