Rob K

Hi,

I am having some difficulty in locating and downloading some drivers for my PC. It is a home-built system, and recently had XP SP3 installed on a new hard drive. I have accessed the Microsoft upgrade website, and installed all upgrades for XP (incl SP3, etc...), hardware and software listed on the site.

I did this in relation to another thread that I have running on the TSF website relating to a crashing problem with Americas Army 3.

Part of my fault-finding exercise was to upgrade all drivers for all hardware that had not been done by the Microsoft site. To help clarify this, I downloaded, installed and ran several packages to show up what I have in my PC, and the current versions and ages of the drivers etc. These packages are:-

Driver Robot V 1.0.9.3,
Driver Detective V 6.4.1.3,
System Spec V 2.69,
VersionTracker Pro, V4.1.

I also looked at the “Hardware manager” in the Windows “Control panel – System “ menu. I started with upgrading the motherboard drivers directly from the manufacturer’s (MSI) website, as MOST OF MY SYSTEM RUNS OFF THE MOTHERBOARD. I use the onboard sound chipset, LAN, USB etc. I have a Sapphire PCIe graphics card plugged, but that is the only expansion card, so I reckoned that I ought to be able to update most of my drivers via the site for the motherboard manufacturer (MSI). I did this, and downloaded the latest driver for my ATI Radeon 4850 graphics card from the ATI site. I expected this to pretty much do the job of updating the drivers.

However, I was surprised by the results. I ran the packages (Driver Detective, etc…) and looked at the results. There were some conflicting reports of which hardware devices were up to date, and which ones were not. I have spent most of today, so far, Googling for web sites that might allow me to download the drivers that were out of date. The keyboard, mouse and LAN drivers were fairly straightforward, but I have been chasing my tail in circles for the last half dozen or so. I am sceptical as to what is the root-cause of this for several reasons:-

1) The Driver Robot, Driver Detective and VersionTracker indicate that some drivers are out of date, but the list is not the same between them. Also, non of them tells me which version/date of driver I have installed, and which version/date is the “up-to-date” one that I need. Also, the error messages do not identify the manufacturer of the hardware chipset/device, etc, so I don’t know which manufacturer’s website to Googe for.

2) If I Google with the text of the driver title from the error messages (like “AMD PCI IDE Controller”, or “ Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller”), I get re-directed to a “dead-end” type web site. When I say “dead-end”, I mean that it does not allow me to just identify and download the necessary driver. Instead, the site that I am re-directed to starts wanting me to jump through more hoops, like performing a “free” driver scan with Driver Detective” or “Driver Robot”, (or some other “free” scanning package) and then will not allow me to access and download the driver unless I register and PAY for the service, or, the re-direction is to a non existent page (Error 404, page not found), or the page just lists stacks of other web pages relating to nothing related to the search-string text.

So, can anyone shed any light on these two issues:-

Firstly, Why do the above-named packages identify different drivers and either “up-to-date” or “out-of-date” differently? Where are they getting their info from regarding what is “current” and what is “old”?

Secondly, can anyone suggest where I can easily download drivers for the following devices, as highlighted in my Driver Detective scan results? :-

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers – (2) AMD PCI IDE Controller
IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers – OHCI Compatible IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Sound, video and game controllers - ATI Function Driver for High Definition Audio ATI AA01
Universal Serial Bus controllers – Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller
“Unplugged” Devices – HID-compliant mouse


Driver Robot found even more “out-of-date” drivers, namely :-

Display adapters – ATI Radeon HD 4800 series (…I have updated this TWICE from AMD-ATI site !?!?)
Network adapters – Relatek PCIe GBE Family Controller (Updated twice from Realtek site !?!?)
Mice and other pointing devices – HID compliant mouse (6 entries under this heading !!!)
Keyboards – PS/2 keyboard
Universla Serial Bus Controllers – USB Root Hub (2 entries)
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers – AMD PCI IDE Controller (same as listed by Driver Detective, above)
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers – AMD SATA Controllers (Native IDE mode) (NOT listed by Driver Detective, above…)

What I find particularly suspect is that I have upgraded the drivers for the ATI Radeon 4800 graphics card and the Realtek audio drivers directly from the ATI and Realtek sites today, but the above-named packages are telling me that they are STILL out of date.

I suspect that Driver Detective and Driver Robot may be telling me that some of my drivers are out of date, but not clearly highlighting what the versions of the drivers are, and if I pay to use the update functionality, they would install whatever the latest driver is that it can find and “report” to me that the “upgrade” has been done, even if it were over-writing a current driver with another copy of the same!

Can anyone provide any links to where I can actually identify these “suspect” drivers and download the latest version for all of them?

Cheers,

Rob

simpswr

My experience with junk sofware like you are using is that they will alsays report out of date drivers and offer to sell new onew to you. I would ignore anything they report

zerofire

All of the results are false positives. The fact that you updated the realtek and ati drivers before the detection proves that there are incorrect results. All the others come default with the operating system. Updating of them will only happen in a patch or something. If anything the updated versions are probably for a different operating system. If you really want to make your life easy you should uninstall all of those programs and do the updates manually for the hardware that you know is installed piece by piece.

Tyree

I couldn't agree more. ALWAYS update drivers from the manufacturer's site.

Riskyone101

Hello,

I also agree 100% the driver programs are NOT reliable when finding drivers for the pc.

List your specs here and I will locate all the drivers for you.

Motherboard model number
CPU
Video card
Sound card if any added

Rob K

Hi,

This is a cut-and-paste copy from my system specifications, as reported by System Spec:-

Motherboard: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD DKA790GX Platinum (MS-7550).

CPU Info: AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor
CPU Speed: 2599.2 MHz
Sound card: Not detected
Display Adapters: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series | ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

Cheers,

Rob

Riskyone101

Hello and Welcome to TSF,

Go here for south bridge chipset driver: (Not sure if needed)
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_ca...d/xp32-chipset

Go here for video card: HD 4800 series
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_ca...=xp/radeonx-xp

Go here for motherboard drivers:
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=do...1&prod_no=1552

Go here for MB Utilities: OPTIONAL
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=do...1&prod_no=1552

Notes: Install chipset driver first, video driver, network driver, audio driver.

Installing windows:

1. Install windows
2. Install drivers
3. Install pc protection
4. Update through microsoft updates