formatting old comp

[lefty911]

hi

i am planning on formating a computer i bought from a store (prebuilt). i dont have any chipset/mobo drivers and cds for it at all..

how do i go about this...

do i have to go and d/l them before formating? and how do i even find out what special drivers i need?

thanks for any help

[pam123]

You've got an XP (or other OS) cd, right ?
To tell you the rest we need the specs, that will tell us what drivers you need.
Yes you need them before you format.

edit : If necessary run Belarc Advisor to find out what the specs are : http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[lefty911]

yea ive got a win xp cd

thanks for that lil advisory thingo.

now what peices of hardware do i need to get drivers for and where can i get them from

[rjfvillarosa]

Windows XP will have generic drivers for almost all of your hardware, after the install you can atempt to make things run better by updating any of your hardware drivers that you think would benefit from it.
To me the most important drivers to update straight after a fresh install are the motherboard drivers, all hardware drivers can be downloaded from the manufacturers website.