rebuild drivers

[laurfar]

Hi,
I just had to do a format and recovery on my HP pavilion 6730 PC. I have win98se. I remember on a previous time, that I got some instruction from the HP tech, saying that I can go to the drivers that came on this PC, delete them, and they will rebuild themselves. Should I do that again? How do I find the drivers? Any help is much appreciated.

 

[MustBNuts]

If you rewrote your machine using the HP recovery disks, you should have one that has the appropriate drivers on it for installation. Most of the time they are on a separate disk from the recovery image so they can be installed apart from the complete recovery. If you don't have disks, check for a partition on the hdd to see if they are hiding there with the recovery image.

Hope this helps,

MBN

 

[laurfar]

I only have the "system recovery" CD and the "application recovery"CD. Nothing else. You said "If you don't have disks, check for a partition on the hdd to see if they are hiding there with the recovery image." I don't know what checking the partition on the hdd means. Can you walk me through it. Should I not worry about this rebuilding the drivers thing? I've done it every time I had to reformat the PC, but I had free tech help back then. No longer have that, my time for that ran out.
Thanks for you time

 

[MustBNuts]

Okay, all I meant was if your system has a "second" hard drive, the image of the recovery disk may be there. But you have the disks, so this is moot.

Check the application recovery CD in Windows Explorer and you will probably find a drivers folder on there.

Also, what drivers are you looking for? What pieces are you left installing manually?

MBN

 

[laurfar]

I know this sounds dumb, but I don't think I'm missing any drivers. I just thought someone would know about what I did in the past. A HP tech said that I should just delete some of the drivers on the list and let the pc rebuild them when I rebooted. If this isn't necessary, then I will leave it alone. It's all complicated to me.

 

[deHakkelaar]

A HP tech said that I should just delete some of the drivers on the list and let the pc rebuild them when I rebooted.

I think you mean deleting hardware components from the hardware profile :
right click on "My Computer" --> look for "hardware profile" i believe (long time ago W98)

If you delete/remove a piece of hardware there , the W98 plug & play system (read: plug&pray) will usualy , after a reboot , find the removed hardware again & reinstall the drivers from hard disk if correctly installed.

BUT BE CAREFULL WHAT YOU REMOVE BECAUSE SOME ITEMS CANOT BE REMOVED OR ELSE W98 WONT START CORRECTLY !!!

I dont see the point for doing this if your system is running fine but if your wrestling with (read: messed up) your drivers its sometimes usefull to remove them from the hardware profile to re-install the drivers.

 

[laurfar]

Thanks, this is probably just what I'm looking for. I won't use it right now, as you said things seem to be running OK. Good to know where to look. Thanks!!

 

[deHakkelaar]

You're welcome , if it wasn't for the not W98 supported on-board ethernet drivers for my new motherboard, I still would run W98 which I installed 1 time and run for 6 years on 4 different machines