tzgaljic Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Hi Guys,I've got a PC on which something happened to the hard drive so it lost partitions. I managed to retrieve all files from the drive using some recovery utility at another PC. Now I would like to format the drive and install WinXP from the scratch.Since this is a PC of my friend, I have absolutely no clue which hardware exactly is inside - i.e. which drivers should be installed. And I don't want to pull all the hardware out of the case just to find out the exact manufacturer, model, etc. So it occurred to me, since I have recovered "the old" WinXP directory, whether some information about the installed drivers can be found there.Or is there any other way to find out about this?Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y2khardtop Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 a program like double-driver installed on the working PC should be able to scan your hard drive an pull the drivers, assuming as you say the windows folder is intact.However, I'd just reinstall Windows and let device manager tell you what drivers you need. It will automatically install most drivers, and those that don't can be tracked down from the manufacturer. It is rare that you have a device in device manager that doesn't tell you what it is and who made it. Most OEM PC's I've seen will only have 1 or 2 drivers that don't install automatically with XP. Unless you know for a fact that you have an obscure graphics card, it should boot up and run fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hb_Kai Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Manufacturer booklets when you got the computer?Maybe there are some things in the Program Files folder to tell you what some stuff was. I've got an ATI Graphics driver and when I was on Windows it made a folder in there for some reason. Sticker things on the computer anywhere?Is there anything to say so on the hardware inside? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seshomaru Samma Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 you can run a live Cd (like Knoppix , puppy , ubuntu etc) the command lspciwill tell you the hardware Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Did they not keep the driver discs that came with the PC? :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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