Vista - Restoring drivers after reformat

I have a question about finding hardware information after a reformat (for driver installation).

Lets say I have a box with no OS or driver CDs, and I install Windows (XP or Vista). Is msinfo32 capable of telling me what the hardware is even if I don't have the drivers for it (assume fresh install, first boot)?

I was reading this stickied thread and was wondering if tools like msinfo32 and GPU-Z would be able to give me the name of the manufacturer and model of a piece of hardware even if I didn't have the drivers installed.

I recently helped reformat a friends computer, and while he had most of the driver CDs, he didn't have one for his sound card. I tried letting Windows Update search for the drivers through devmgmt.msc, and while usually in my experience it finds the drivers needed, it couldn't find anything. After reading the linked thread, I thought I might try using msinfo32 to find info about his sound card manufacturer (it's not integrated and the actual PCI card didn't have the model info on it).

Does anyone have any knowledge on this subject?

bump

Hello Frank,

I guess the PC Wizard 2008 - Download can do this. It's free You can try the EVEREST Ultimate Edition Download - Softpedia but I can't remember is it free or not. Anyway give a try the first one.

Cheers...

I have Everest Ultimate Edition and I'll try the PC Wizard 2008. I guess the only way to figure this out is to do a dual boot XP without drivers and try this out. I'll get back to this thread with results if I ever get the time to do so.

Edit: PC Wizard is amazing, wonder why I never found if before on CPUID's site

I finally got around to dual booting a fresh install of Win XP and I've tried 3 different programs to detect hardware without any drivers installed (I used the programs on the first boot). None of my laptop drivers were included in the XP CD, so I didn't have any ethernet, audio, graphics (integrated Intel GMA 950), SD card (5 in 1 reader), or wireless drivers.

HWiNFO32 detected everything except for my network hardware.
PC Wizard 2008 along with Everest Ultimate Edition (v5) detected everything.

So if you're in a situation where you reformat and don't have any driver CDs (and you don't want to pay for any programs), use HWiNFO32 and PC Wizard 2008. Also, if you're thinking about reformatting, I found a nifty little program called DriverMax which backs up all of your drivers (or you can select certain ones) and then even imports them once you reformat (you have to reisntall DriverMax after reformat for this).

Oh and if anyone else knows any hardware detection programs that they would like me to test out, tell me now, I'll just leave the XP partition on my HD, driverless for a bit.

I hope this info is helpful to others.

Thanks for posting back Frank. I'm glad you found the PCWizard useful. You can download PCWizard as the portable one. Very useful to run from the usb stick for example. Try the ReSysInfo portable, too.

Thank you again. Cheers...

I'm working on a Gateway LX 6810-01 and he completley reformatted his hard drive. He ordered some factory discs to restore to factory settings but when it loads it up it just hangs.

I made a vista 64 recovery disc and it loads up.. When it does it asks for the Dvd/cd Rom driver.

The device is a HL - DT - ST DVDRAM GH15F SCSI Cdrom Device

It lets me serach for it and flash drive is an option and I have one handy, however I can't just find the driver I need and put it on this flash drive for the computer I'm working on.

I didn't know optical drives had drivers, I thought they only needed firmware - or doesn't Windows use a 'universal' driver for all optical drives?

Is there an operating system currently installed on the HD? If Windows, try running devmgmt.msc (Device Manager) and find the piece of hardware which has a yellow exclamation mark next to it and try updating it online.

I have no idea if it's firmware or a driver, but the hard drive is wiped. I'm using a vista 64 bit recovery disc thats asking for the driver or whatever.