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Lesson 3: Device driver installation and hard drive setup

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Overview

In lesson 3 we'll show device drivers installation for hardware Windows didn't recognize during the Windows installation. Then we'll complete the hard drive setup by partitioning and formating the second SATA hard drive.

In order to see what hardware Windows has detected we need to go to device manager. The quickest way to get there is to go to Start and right-click on Computer, go to Manage and Device Manager is over on the left.

We can see from the list there's a section called Other Devices. This is all the hardware that Windows has detected, but it doesn't have a driver for. There are two Ethernet controllers which are built into the motherboard. There's a network controller and this is the wireless network adapter we added to the PCI slot. There's also two PCI devices and I think these are probably the Sound Blaster XFI PCI Express card that we added.

There's also a SM Bus Controller and seven System Interrupt controllers. These are all part of the motherboard. There's also an Unknown device. It's kind of hard to tell what that is until we load the drivers that we have. Finally, its detected the video card, but it doesn't have a driver.

What we're going to do is install the drivers for each of the devices until all the hardware that's now in Other Devices is in the other categories where it should be.

If you have installed Windows XP you can find a video showing how to install drivers in XP at www.homepcbuilder.com/xp

Before we start installing drivers there are a few thing you need to know. The first is that drivers made for Windows Vista will also work in Windows 7. Second, if you've installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Vista you need to make sure the drivers you install either from a disc that came with the hardware or drivers you've downloaded from the hardware makers website are made for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows Vista. The same is true if you install the 32-bit version of Windows 7 or Vista. You need to make sure the drivers you install are the 32-bit version.

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