HALP! (Serious tech question inside)

S

Shrike

KittyX
Hi people.

If anyone cares, i've spent the last years with school full time and working 2 jobs after wasting 4 years on FFXI @.@

Fortunately, now i've got a job thats not in a sweatshop so i guess thats good. Unfortunately, the job i got is in computers until there is a spot that opens up for me in the field i studied.


Having a little knowledge about computers , they hired me to help the real technician out with extra work for a while.

Anyways, one of the task i was given was to set up a vista 64 bit machine that a whole department will use later on. The plan is to make an image then just copy/paste for easy and fast installing.

Now this is where it gets a bit more complicated. Before i started working there, some other guy setted up the computer, he installed vista 64 bit all-right, but sadly...he didn't feel it would be convenient to supply the admin password for the machine.

Now i know what you are thinking, just use the disk and reset the admin password that way. Well, during my first 3 days at this new job
...I....accidently....formatted the external drive(yea yea you can laugh :p ) that contained many set-up images...and the program needed to reset the password....

So I had to re-install vista to reset the admin password. Now! This is a Dell pc...i could manage to find the drivers on dell's site for the video card, network adaptor, and mboard chipsets and the sound card easily.

The problem is with stuff like IDE adaptors , ATAPI controllers and the sound stuff(see attached image). I checked on another machine (that is exactly like the one i am working on) the system configs to see if i was missing anything. And my computer is missing a lot of info in those section.

So does anyone know of a way to get all the right drivers, or how to make the computer i'm working on recognize the hardware it should?


Sorry, long post, long read. And i had a long day.
I know quite a few of you guys are tech savvy so, any help is appreciated as i'd rather not spend a day trying to fix this.

PS: Link to the system i'm trying to get to work http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_t3400?c=ca&l=en&s=bsd&cs=cabsdt1
 

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All those basic drivers should have been on the original install discs.

IDE, ATAPI etc...

Assuming you had the install disc, you could just tell the system to "Update Driver' for any unknown devices and make it search the CD. Windows Update generally works too, but it's not super reliable when it comes to those basic type of drivers.

Does your system info/device list have a lot of "Unknown Devices"?

Oh and I forgot you were in Canada... lolFrench.
 
Vista blows. Also, any chipset drivers you need will be on Dell's website and/or are installed automatically with the operating system. Many of the low level drivers for the buses, chips, and controllers are ran with Microsoft's built in drivers.

On the other hand...what in the flying fuck...an nForce chipset? Go to nvidia.com for drivers for that board, if you really need them.
 
Thanks for the help. As for the answers

Furax, that is a pic of my own comp :p Just to show what kind of info is missing.
And for the record the last time i upgraded my comp was sometime along the lines of 2005 XD

Eticket and Aang, there are no Unknown Devices.

I'll try to be more precise if that helps in anyway.

Just assume that the above pic is in english :p

On the "good computer" the ATA/ATAPI IDE controller reads something along the lines of

IDE controller 1 Brand + Numbers
IDE controller 2 Brand + Numbers
IDE controller 3 Brand + Numbers
Intel (x) Chipset Buncha other numbers and descriptions.


On the computer i'm trying to fix it will read as

ATAPI Controller 1
ATAPI Controller 2
ATAPI Controller 3
Intel (x) Chipset Buncha other numbers and descriptions.


So basically, you guys are right, there are drivers installed with the OS and through windows update, but since both computers are the same, i'm somewhat worried that the difference in the drivers/configurations might affect performances since i figured both configs should be exactly the same after all the drivers i could find were re-installed.

I had the same problem when it came to the Computer hardware, but i found some intel drivers for the motherboard and that fixed the problem for that, both computers now list exactly the same thing.

And since i already installed the drivers i could find for the motherboard...how cand i find the precise drivers am i missing for that other stuff :(

Or maybe another question could be: How much of a performance hit could occur from using the generic windows drivers for that kind of stuff instead of what an "out of the box" system would have?

Thanks for the help again.

Edit: Heck i might just post the SS of what i mean tomorow at work.

Also Aang: Tu est une vrai bombe, je veux te couvrir de crème fouetté et de chocolat pour ensuite te lécher tout partout..lentement...de la pointe de tes orteils jusqu'a derrière tes oreilles. Ensuite on pourrait passer au choses sérieuses.
 
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Shrike said:
Or maybe another question could be: How much of a performance hit could occur from using the generic windows drivers for that kind of stuff instead of what an "out of the box" system would have?

Thanks for the help again.
Click to expand...

If it's an average use type of system, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Are your HDD's really connected by *GASP* IDE? Most everything is SATA, so just curious.
 
Well, they will be used by the design team(AKA: Autocad(bleh) and inventor(3d design and modeling).

as for the hard drives , from the dell website:


Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
The Dell Precision T3400 supports up to four hard drives in the tower orientation and up to three hard drives in the desktop orientation for potential capacities of 4TB3 and 3.5TB3 respectively. With RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 options, you can configure your storage to meet your needs, whether it's for storing huge files, backing them up, or helping to improve performance with data-striping.
  • SATA 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM with 16MB DataBurst CacheTM up to 750GB6
  • SATA 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM with 8MB DataBurst CacheTM up to 250GB6
  • SATA 3.0Gb/s 10K RPM with 16MB DataBurst CacheTM up to 160GB6
  • SAS 15K RPM up to 300GB6 (requires controller card)

hmm, i guess it might be worthwhile to find out what company makes those disks, then go on their website to see if they have something to offer.
 
Ah, OK SAS drives. These are "Workstations" not regular Desktop PC's. But, I guess the bold drive type is what you have?

Well, yeah, I would worry about the drivers for those (SATA) and not worry about the IDE/ATAPI so much.
 
If the other machine is exactly the same with all the same hardware. You can copy all the drivers out of the driver folder onto an external device. Then just go into device manger on the messed up machine and have it point to that external device. If its the right drivers it should pick them up.
 
Heie said:
If the other machine is exactly the same with all the same hardware. You can copy all the drivers out of the driver folder onto an external device. Then just go into device manger on the messed up machine and have it point to that external device. If its the right drivers it should pick them up.
Click to expand...

Thats's a pretty good idea, one that i tried actually, but the other machine is running win xp 32 bit, the one i'm configuring(trying to) is running vista 64 bit so..no go on getting the drivers that way.

My boss made me call the dell costumer service today...yea fat load of good that did...i hate dell >.<

When you think about it the computer works just fine, but since this will be deployed to a whole department, the configuration has to be top notch to justify the 3.5k investment per computer they did :(

This is all silly too, its just drivers XD. There's no reason why i should end up with a different setup using the drivers they supplied on dell.com on the same machine.

PS: Nek, i don't know much about computers..still i landed a job as a technician...maaannn....what have i gotten myself into -_-
 
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