Windows 10: afraid of not finding right drivers

Hello All,

I Have DELL XPS-13 (9343). I have upgraded to win10 from win8.1. I have issues with my win10 now. I want to clean install win10 on my laptop.

• I'm afraid of not finding right drivers if i clean install.
• Is there a specific order in which drivers should be loaded.

Thanks a lot for your help.

:)

 

Windows not finding drivers

Device drivers for non-Microsoft hardware (most of it) is a 'you get it from the manufacturer yourself and install it yourself' thing. Where SOME device drivers might be pushed to you on occasion, almost ALWAYS the ones YOU can obtain directly from the
hardware manufacturer are newer/have improvements over even those.

In other words, if you are depending on Microsoft to provide support for your non-Microsoft hardware in the form of device drivers (third party software) - you need to re-think that. ;-)

 

Windows not finding drivers

I've noticed that some of my drivers are very old like I mean VERY old. Some drivers are from 11 years ago and windows say its the latest driver. I know this is false because it said the same thing about my graphics driver which was from 2015 but I got
fed up and uninstalled it and restarted and boom 2017 version was there. I don't want to uninstall every driver I have to verify if it will update, is there a better way to do this? HP is totally unreliable, they said the latest drivers for me was that 2015
version and here I have a 2017 one. If someone could please help, I've had this problem unresolved for a long time, thanks!

 

Look at Dell for drivers first.
I usually start with drivers for chipset first.

 

If you don't have Ethernet make sure you download Wi-Fi drivers before clean install so you can connect to internet and download the rest.

 

The Windows 8 drivers are no different then the Windows 10. If Dell does not have them. You can go to the chipset manufacturer's website and download them.

 

I wouldn't advise using Driver Boost or indeed anything from IObit !!!

 

Download latest drivers for Windows 8 or 7 from Dell, including the LAN driver, as you may not be able to connect to the internet after the clean-install. Since all other drivers depend on the motherboard components (chipset), always start with the chipset driver, then graphics, audio etc. If you have the factory Windows (you never clean-install before), there might be a folder in C: (drivers or Dell or swsetup or similar) containing all the drivers, but I would prefer downloading the latest from the website to make sure I have them all and they are the most compatible. During Setup you may be offered to check for updates. This will attempt to find and download drivers automatically. This in some notebooks can be OK but in others can introduce incompatibilities and BSOD. I would recommend to uncheck the box, install Windows 10 and after you can successfully boot to the desktop, you can install any drivers. I also recommend to install as many drivers as you can manually from manufacturer and avoid using Windows Update for them since Microsoft generic drivers often have problems and they are for basic functionality only. They hardly take advantage of the full potential of the hardware like an OEM driver.

 

Many thanks guys. I appreciate your help. I'll let you all know about the progress soon

 

Hi all, I looked up on dell website. Downloaded the drivers. Thankfully they have an option of showing drivers in "installation order"
Downloaded them and stored them in numbered folders. After clean Win10 installation installed all the drivers one by one.

Only glitch i came across was at one Dell application named "Dell Digital Delivery Application" few times the installation failed. It was because it was looking for .NET 3.5 framework. Looked up on google and used "DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All /LimitAccess /Source*Biggrin:\sources\sxs"

Command to get .NET 3.5 framework.
So far everything looks good.....touchwood...

Thanks to all,

Cheers....

 

Congratulations. I would install only the drivers and not all Dell applications. They aren't really necessary.

 

Hmm, just how did you enter that emoi in the command prompt ?

 

Probably it was a combination such as / and : and the forum engine converted it to the emoticon.

 

It's funny (like haha funny) though !