Motherboard Drivers

[357mag]

In the past whenever I have wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Win 2000 I have never reinstalled the motherboard drivers, and I've never had a problem. The guy at the local shop told me that I should always reinstall the motherboard drivers which are on a CD that came with my motherboard. If I haven't installed them in the past but never had any problems then what's going on? Does Windows automatically load some kind of default driver or something? If I don't need them I'd rather not install them, and from what I've seen thus far it doesn't appear that I need them. So you can understand my confusion. What's the deal here?

[Corky]

The chipset drivers---- Yes, you need them. They are thefirst thing you should install after the OS installation completes. Do a Google search.

[Panama Red]

Consider that the motherboard maker may have found and corrected problems on your board with the release of newer drivers than those that are build in to Win2000, or even XP. As Corky says, always best to install the chipset drivers immediatly after a fresh install/reinstall on a wiped hard drive. Same is true of the other hardware drivers. Best to visit the mobo maker's site and download the latest.

[357mag]

So does Win 2000 automatically load some kind ofdefault chipset driver for your motherboard when you install the OS? Cuz as I said earlier I've never had a problem with not installing the motherboard drivers.

[Panama Red]

Yes, just like XP it has default drivers to run the system until you can intall the correct drivers for all your hardware.

[glc]

The need for chipset drivers all depends on which exact chipset you have. Generally, the older the chipset, the more likely your OS has native support that works properly.