I do some work on computers for cash, this one was for a friend of mine's coworker at a local lumber yard. It is good to have friends there... Anyway, a quick format, install WinXP (their disk) and I get a case of beer and some meat marinade. No freaking problem right?

Right? WRONG! It started fine, boot with the WinXP disk, format and install, yawn, this will be easy. Everything worked last night except the video card. I mean the chipset, NIC, sound, all that worked off the WinXP disk, well, I will fix that Sunday.

Now Sunday comes around. And this thing was beating me down. It is an Alienware Area-51 laptop. It has a Mobility Radeon 9000 video in it. Hmm, the Alienware site has a Radeon 9600, and 9700, no 9000, and they don't work. I tried Dell's site, no luck. I tried older Cats, no luck. They simply would not install!!!

I Googled, Scroogled, and downloaded a bunch of drivers that would not work. I even had to click on adds to download one of them, I am glad I did that on the laptop, it would shame me to watch adds on my computer, but I was desperate!

It turns out it is the strangest driver install I have done. In Device manager, you click on Update driver, blah blah, no wizard, I will select the device. When you select the video card, you have 3 main options, with multiple options. ATI and Mobility Radeon #3 worked just great for me.

Windows had the driver the whole FREAKIN time!

Whew, well, it is fixed, and I get a case of beer Monday! They don't know what brand of beer I want a case of... I like the Belgium Lambics... I can't do that to them though, I guess it will be a case of Miller Lite.

Hope your day went well!

E

Old drivers can be the biggest pain in the butt. Glad you got it figured out before you tossed the thing out the window.

And my day went pretty good, the Giants won!

I always cross my fingers the first time I restore a computer and dont have the drivers. I just pray windows is able to find most of them.

The laptop I was working on was very infected with virus, so I did not use this, but for a normal format and re-install, I found this program to backup drivers |MG| Driver Magician Lite 3.33

Looks like a good program.

E

Quote: Originally Posted by Fred_G The laptop I was working on was very infected with virus, so I did not use this, but for a normal format and re-install, I found this program to backup drivers |MG| Driver Magician Lite 3.33 Looks like a good program. E

there are also some third-party drivers that would work as well, but most of them build off the official drivers. And, on those pages (wish I could remember the name) there's a specific reference that mobile ATi cards can't be updated past Catalyst version somethingorother.

IE, the newer drivers from ATi aren't backward compatable (but you know that now. )

Good job on the Driver Magician find!

-godling

the laptop did not come with a restore disk?

not talkign about the XP CD, but a CD called alien-respawn or somethign like that.

its basicly 1 CD with ghost 8 on it branded with alienware and a DVD with the image for that computer.

basicly, it is the only thing that alienware has done right in its life. thier computers still blows... ehh ill stop there.

if need be, i can log into my alienware acct and DL drivers if you want to PM me a list of what you need.

@ TCG_Modder No restore disk, they lost it years ago... I found all the drivers for it, but thanks for the offer.

E

I always try to find the Driver B4 I format a computer........But as luck has it they can be a pain in the azz.