pre-installing chipset drivers a good thing?  

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  1. Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #1

    pre-installing chipset drivers a good thing?


    Hello
    Just wondering if preinstalling chip set drivers is okay. I have all my chipset drivers downloaded from my motherboard providers webpage and then save them to a usb thumb drive. When the win 7 installer shows my partitions and drives i just click on load drivers and browse to usb and load all chipset drivers. I get a list of some 30 different drivers and install all.

    Interestingly, there are 8 intel ich10 family usb enhanced host controllers (3A3C, 3A3A, 3A34-3A39) that wont install. I have to do it right after the installation is complete (first time i enter desktop environment). Any ideas why this might be happening and what to do about it? Also is it fine to install these drivers in this manner?

    Cheers!
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  2. Posts : 12,012
    Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-bit
       #2

    Preinstalling???

    As far as I know, the best practice is to install chipset drivers immediately after Windows, before any other drivers.
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  3. Posts : 7,730
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-Bit
       #3

    It's reckoned to be good practice to install chipset drivers first, by virtue of how much hardware such as USB controllers etc., need the drivers to function.

    If ever I reinstall I always install the chipset drivers first, followed by any storage drivers then network adapters and the graphics card before finishing up with the sound card and other bits and pieces.
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  4.    #4

    While this may have been true in XP and early Vista, Win7 is driver-complete with newer drivers delivered via optional Windows Updates.

    Microsoft spent a fortune subsidizing manufacturers to build drivers for Win7 so they could have them in the installer first and available via Updates, and so manufacturers couldn't hold out as they did in early Vista to force us to buy newer hardware.

    After install and Updates, you only need to import drivers missing in Device Manager. Then I would not change out any drivers unless performance problems point specifically to those drivers, or you are stuck with the Standard VGA display driver.
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  5. Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #5

    i ask this question because when i preinstall chipset drivers they are all seen as updated by Driver Detective after OS installation. There are some specific drivers (USb host controllers) that i have to manually install after OS install but that works fine as well because they are not updated by windows update. If i install chipset drivers immediately after OS installation there are always 6 specific drivers missing (belonging to the SOuthbridge chipset family).

    Not sure how it works but my impression is drivers are downloaded and installed to a system folder in the subdirectory called "Drivers" right? If this is true where are preinstalled drivers installed to?

    None the less it seems to me that preinstalling CHIPSET drivers only seems to work fine. I just want to know from someone with more knowledge about this if that is indeed the case?

    thanks
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  6.    #6

    Sorry I thought we were talking about Win7.

    If it's XP then using Driver Detective or pre-loading chipset is still required. It isn't at all required by Win7 unless performance problems point to the chipset given by the installer or Windows updates - then you can change them out to see the difference.

    We see a lot of cases here of users trying to apply XP solutions to Win7 which is a whole new ballgame. Users will change out all of the drivers given by installer and wonder why they have performance problems.
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  7. Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #7

    I am talking about windows 7.

    I think i am being the one that is unclear. I am a bit of a noobie.

    I get what ur saying that W7 is driver complete. However i think ur wrong because i have drivers that are out of date as i mentioned above when i use driver detective.

    Having said that everything works fine. I have no performance hits that i can think of.
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  8. Posts : 17,322
    Win 10 Pro x64
       #8

    gmwal said:
    I am talking about windows 7.

    I think i am being the one that is unclear. I am a bit of a noobie.

    I get what ur saying that W7 is driver complete. However i think ur wrong because i have drivers that are out of date as i mentioned above when i use driver detective.

    Having said that everything works fine. I have no performance hits that i can think of.
    I would trust windows to know if a driver is out of date, if everything is working fine then you don't really need to update any drivers.

    Driver Detective may be giving you some inaccurate info, the best place to get the correct drivers is the manufacturer's downloads page if one is out of date.
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  9. Posts : 12,012
    Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-bit
       #9

    gmwal said:
    I have all my chipset drivers downloaded from my motherboard providers webpage and then save them to a usb thumb drive.
    You use the plural "drivers" and "them".

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

    So I am wondering if there is some terminology confusion here??

    Are you installing TWO or more chipset drivers on a single motherboard??

    And I don't understand what you mean by "pre-install". "Pre" usually means "before", so the question is "before what"?? Why not just install them AFTER Windows, in the normal fashion?
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  10. Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #10

    ignatzatsonic:

    You are right, I am talking about one set of chipset drivers downloaded from my Motherboard website

    When i say preinstall (and bear with me b/c i do not know the proper terminology so i will describe it as best i can) when you run the Win7 installer and you get to the screen where you can partition your drives, format them, where you want to install your OS just before it installs, etc. there is an option to "load drivers". At this point i plug my usb device that has the chipset drivers on them and load them from my usb device. I use the plural form because there are several individual chipset drivers in the set but normally if you run the setup program after OS installation u do not see them because they are all installed automatically by the installer. But here windows lists individually all the chipset drivers belonging to that set. so for example, i can install individual chip set drivers that belong to that one set.

    The reason i dont just run the setup program after OS installation like most people and install the whole set at once is because when i run driver detection programs that scan my computer for latest drivers, some system devices that should of been updated by the chipset drivers are not .
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