Anyone know of a free service and/or software that scans your computer and finds/suggests drivers/updates?
I've recently downgraded a computer from Vista to XP and the Compaq site has only Vista drivers under the support section.
New: Run-Command (Dec 2, 2024), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, 2024)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
No Ads Nov/Dec!, Please donate today
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
Go into hardware manager and do the install driver thing there.
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
That isn't really what I was asking for. The issue is that I have an OEM computer that came with Vista installed on it. I've now removed Vista and replaced it with XP. Unfortunately XP is not finding device drivers for some of hardware (they are listed in Device Manager with the yellow exclamation mark and given generic names).
The OEM website is as good as useless at telling me what the actual hardware is, so I'm kinda shooting in the dark. Although I might be able to use the Vista drivers (they might actually have XP versions bundled with them, or simple be XP compatible).
As it happens, I've almost got all devices working now, I'm down to just two and I know that one of them is an onboard RealTek network interface, so with a bit of searching I should be able to find an XP driver for that.
It would be nice if I could just run a (free) program that says, "Oh, you have this hardware installed and the driver you need is this..." *big oversized hand pointing to a location of where I might find a driver* OR "you've currently got this driver installed for this device, but you need to update it you slacker!" *big oversized hand pointing to a location of where I might find an updated driver*
Yes, it's just me being lazy, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years, why do the hard work if somebody else has already done it for you?
Hi. Sorry for not seeing this post sooner... I can't help you with the drivers, but since you said you downgraded from Vista to XP, I should warn you that some video codec packs that work on Vista may cause freezes of your video players under XP. This happens mainly with BSplayer, but it happens with some of the other video players as well. Just thought to give you a heads-up, since something similar is very likely to happen if you install drivers for Vista on XP. If you find ones for XP, great, use them. If you find ones for Vista, then Google is your friend (as well as Trial'n'Error is).
Cheers
PS: Did you manage to get the necessary drivers?
My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.
I gave the computer back and everything was/is working better than it ever was under Vista. It just took a little more detective work to find the right drivers but I guess it's just a one time thing, so no big deal.
As for video codecs, I installed portableapps on the machine including VLC so I can't see codecs being a problem.
If you're talking about graphics cards then I was able to easily find an XP driver for the NVidia chipset, so it's all good.
Smart thinking about VLC.
Glad you found the drivers!
Also, that AIDA ottosykora is talking about sounds like something you were looking for... Guess someone should have bumped this post some time ago
My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.
I was often using things like AIDA and similar, just it gave me the name and type of the hardware parts, from there I went to the manufacturers, like intel, nvidia, realtek and what ever and got some drivers from there. The OEM websites like Dell or Compaq or what ever have only drivers for the system as they have sold it, they often do not have the right to distribute drivers where they are not OEM for. So they might have a permission to place drivers for vista on their website, but not for XP.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
DriverView & ServiWin, both from NirSoft, may not be quite what you're looking for, but they should be close.
DriverView: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html
ServiWin: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/serviwin.html
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
I like NirSoft's programs, and I use many of them, including DriverView (and pretty much all other *View.exes). But unfortunately, it only provides info on already installed drivers, not about where you can get some and which drivers you need...
That's why I hadn't suggested it. But it's still a great piece of software. 
My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.