Hey there guys, first post on the forums so I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Basically, I've reformatted a few windows 7 pc's as of late using an ISO burned onto a cd. My question is, as a reformat wipes everything, is there any easy way to install the drivers for the pc without the drivers disk that tends to be provided? The only way I can think of is preinstalling the drivers onto a flash drive or something alike, but that is time consuming, and although I can do that, I'd like to know if there are any other ways. Cheers for any help in advance
Go to the manufactures website and download the latest drivers. Can use the HW ID or PID to help locate the correct driver. Also, you can slipstream drivers into the windows 7 iso.
The Windows 7 generic drivers may be all you need. If you're installing onto a laptop, generally you'll need the drivers from the maker to have all the bells and whistles most laptops seems to have. You can integrate drivers into the installation program, but that would limit the CD to only certain computers by make and model. Unless you want to make a make/model DVD or flash drive for every possible machine you'll ever work on, you're better off just installing windows and then installing the drivers (gotten from the maker's website) in a separate step. Time consuming? Well, maybe, but some things just take a bit of time to get it right. And I suspect that's what you "customers" expect. You can also set up Windows Update to get drivers and they will be machine specific as supplied by the component's maker.
Also may there isn't really a need to download a huge pack of drivers and after that didn't find what you're looking for, you couls us some of the free Driver Updater Apps like Driver Detective or others. Why I suggest that? In Thailand we could get all different CD\DVD full with Drivers etc. and even after having a bunch of that, we still need to search on the Internet for to get what we need or looking for! I've more than 20 CD's full with drivers and going on use the Internet to get the needed drivers! It's also faster and more easy need much less effort!!
I'm just using a generic ISO disk to reformat alot of laptops so slipstreaming drivers into the disk wouldn't really be an option because I'd have a ton of different disks. What I think I'll do is just get the network driver and stick it on a flash drive before hand, that way I can atleast connect to a network and let windows update find its generic drivers. Would that be viable?
Well yeah, but Windows 7 has built-in network drivers. If they're not working though, you have to supply a driver unique to the network card.