Where are people getting their drivers?

[meanderer]

I find the driver tools to be hard to use, so I usually just go straight to the device properties and look for vendor code and device code, then get it straight from the manufacturer's site.
A bit cumbersome but still works for me so far.
The branding badges on laptops help a lot when you see VGA adapters not working on the best resolution. same with centrino and boardcom badges.

[meanderer]

Originally Posted by mkeathley

I've seen ppl talk about driver packs a bunch. I've dl'd them and yet have no idea how to actually use them. How can I tell what driver is for what?

supposedly, you integrate them into your windows XP install disc with tools like nLite. I didn't see it working last time I tried however. Not every driver were installed, I still need to find some myself.

[shamrin]

Originally Posted by mraikes

I've used Drivermax with good success.

Drivermax looks interesting, how do you use it? Do you go to the website and search and download the file you need or do you use the client program?

[mraikes]

Originally Posted by shamrin

Drivermax looks interesting, how do you use it? Do you go to the website and search and download the file you need or do you use the client program?

It's an application you install that automatically checks for updated and (more importantly) missing drivers. It will also backup & restore existing drivers.

It works particularly well for those times you missed backing up a driver or are trying to figure out "unknown hardware".

For straight machine to same machine backup & restoration, there are more lightweight tools, but Drivermax is a good all-around solution that does that, plus really helps with unknown hardware & broken drivers.

[elegia]

Drivereasy or slimdrivers.

Both good. Driver easy will list all drivers and ones in red are the missing ones. But it does take a while to download each driver.

Slimdrivers is very good - after the scan it will list all the windows updates needed too, though you can ignore them if you want (only pain with that is that all the ones you want to ignore have to be checked individually.
However when downloading the drivers it will download and install each driver in turn. You will have to click through the install set up manually, but once each driver is installed slim drivers reboots the computer and will automatically begin downloading the next driver. Works pretty fast and I have had no problems so far with using it.

[ell]

I like DeviceDr, if that doesn't find it I just go to pci data base and google like crazy

[Pc Fixed Right]

isnt esx 4000 just the series of the machine and not the actual model? If so here is the gateway link I dont think they list ESX but instead list it as E-4xxx
If I am wrong than here is a better link =)

Here is another link just incase I am wrong twice lol

[MobileTechie]

I've been using that russian driverpacks dvd DriverPack Solution 9 Professional - the one that resets the home page to some russian search page! Other than that annoyance it does a great job of analysing the drivers, finding unknown device drivers and installing/updating them. It has a big stock of drivers on it but will also update from the driverpacks site too. Seems to solve almost all driver problems for free.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/...p-vista-and-7/

[Pc Fixed Right]

nice find thanks .........

I can't read the captcha argh and google wont translate it

[gazza]

I use driverbackup 2 to backup drivers.