Regaining Drivers for certain Hardware in XP/2000

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Guest

Hello.

I have a Dell Optiplex 745 PC with 4 operating systems on a hard drive of 6
partitions. Each OS is on a different partition. The operating systems are
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Windows Vista Business, Windows XP Professional,
Windows 2000 Professional.

Installation History:
About two weeks ago I was posted around about problems I had in getting all
the Windows OS to work together on the same hard drive. The IT department
installed Win2000 after WinXP and that destroyed Xp's boot sector. I had to
reinstall WinXP but my WindowsXP boot cd would not boot from the BIOS. I had
to format the XP partition and copy the Win2000 partition into the WinXP
partition. After this I booted up into that new copy of Win2000 and did a
complete clean upgrade install into WinXP. After I resized the partition to
give XP more space.

Issue:
All the OS work but I discovered a problem with XP and 2000 that must be
solved. WindowsXP and 2000 do not detect a bunch of hardware. It seems the
drivers are missing. I will list the devices that are under “Other Devicesâ€
in the Device Manager Tree. Each have the yellow question mark icon and state
the drivers are not installed. Here is the list:
Ethernet Controller
PCI Device
SM Bus Controller
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller
Unknown Device
Video Controller
Video Controller (VGA Compatible)

WinXP and 2000 state the same thing. I know all hardware works, there are no
problems with Vista and Linux. WinXP and 2000 can not access the Internet
(this is how I discovered the problem) since the network card is not being
recognized due to no driver.

Anyone know what is going on and how to solve this?

Fixes I read about:
I read that if you do an upgrade install or reinstall you need to disconnect
all peripherals except keyboard and monitor. Could this be the source of the
problem? As far as I know nothing is connected to the system other then the
needed hardware.

I also read one can disable and uninstall the “driver†in the device
manager, reboot the system and let Windows automatically detect and install
the driver. I am thinking of pursuing this. Anyone know if this will work? I
can request to get the original Windows XP/2000 installation CDs from the IT
department in case the drivers are on this CD.

Thanks for your time.
 
Swiftmind said:
Hello.

I have a Dell Optiplex 745 PC with 4 operating systems on a hard drive of
6
partitions. Each OS is on a different partition. The operating systems are
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Windows Vista Business, Windows XP
Professional,
Windows 2000 Professional.

Installation History:
About two weeks ago I was posted around about problems I had in getting
all
the Windows OS to work together on the same hard drive. The IT department
installed Win2000 after WinXP and that destroyed Xp's boot sector. I had
to
reinstall WinXP but my WindowsXP boot cd would not boot from the BIOS. I
had
to format the XP partition and copy the Win2000 partition into the WinXP
partition. After this I booted up into that new copy of Win2000 and did a
complete clean upgrade install into WinXP. After I resized the partition
to
give XP more space.

Issue:
All the OS work but I discovered a problem with XP and 2000 that must be
solved. WindowsXP and 2000 do not detect a bunch of hardware. It seems the
drivers are missing. I will list the devices that are under "Other
Devices"
in the Device Manager Tree. Each have the yellow question mark icon and
state
the drivers are not installed. Here is the list:
Ethernet Controller
PCI Device
SM Bus Controller
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller
Unknown Device
Video Controller
Video Controller (VGA Compatible)

WinXP and 2000 state the same thing. I know all hardware works, there are
no
problems with Vista and Linux. WinXP and 2000 can not access the Internet
(this is how I discovered the problem) since the network card is not being
recognized due to no driver.

Anyone know what is going on and how to solve this?
Click to expand...

It looks like you didn't install the motherboard chipset drivers. You have
to do this for each of the OS installations.

These drivers will be located on teh CD that came with the motherboard, or
you can identify the system via the Service Tag and get the drivers from
Dell.

HTH
-pk
 
Just wanted to end this thread.

I installed the chipset from the dell support website. I then downloaded the
drivers for the specific devices that were unknown from the dell website as
well. I used Knoppix 5.1.1 to transport the files to the XP and 2000
partitions since XP/2000 could not access the Internet. Chipset was installed
first then I did the drivers. All seems to be well now until I find another
problem.

Thanks for your help.
 
Swiftmind,

I am experiencing the same problem after reinstalling xp on my system. It
has the same list of "?" drivers as you listed.

What would help me is if you could show me the link to where you found the
chipset driver because I have been looking on DELL's support site and it has
not been overly friendly.

Thanks,
BH
 
Swiftmind,

disregard. I found the chipset driver. Thanks for you post on here. Helped
me solve the problem
 
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