Can't figure out how to update drivers for motherboard to install a new AGP video card, please help?

Question

I'm trying to install a Radeon video card to update from my ancient Nvidia one, and the first step is to update the AGP drivers for the motherboard. It said to go to control panel, system, device manager, and system devices. And here I'm supposed to find the chipset manufacturer's name so I can update the drivers? All I see that seems appropriate is "Intel 8w443BX Pentium II processor to AGP controller." Then it says to double click on the name and go to the Driver tab and then go to the Driver Details button. But the button is fogged out, it's lighter, you know, like when they make it so you can't click on it. So I don't know how I'm supposed to update the drivers... The video card I'm using currently is an AGP one, so do I really need to update anything? It says "Not only do you need display drivers for an AGP graphics card, you also need drivers for your motherboard, which enable AGP functionality for the motherboard chipset." And that makes me think it's fine how it is.

If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it... I'm not sure what to do now..

May I ask where that is then? They don't give you a driver disk if you buy it from Dell!

Answer 1

Thank you for providing some really important information to help everyone give you the correct answer...

You are trying to go into the CONTROL PANEL etc to update a driver,
howerver, you must realize that if you get in to the correct section,
it will automatically ask you WHERE IS THE NEW DRIVER, expecting a CD, a floppy, a web address, etc. and you have indicated that you don't have these...

(DELL usually has a hidden partition on the harddrive, with all the
files needed to get your computer going, and all the "old" drivers..
Sometimes it is deliberately hidden from windows, so you can't immediately see it. These "original" drivers are likely out of date, by the time you purchased the unit! There "may" be the manual and other technical information in files, hidden as well. Check you
settings to see under folder options is there are HIDDEN READ ONLY and SYSTEM file checkmarks to hide the files...)

Your Chipset, as you have indicated, is from the INTEL chipsets,
and you can get an all-in-one chipset driver from the INTEL
website that finds the correct chips and upgrades them.

DELL, at thier website may have newer updates by putting in
your model number.

You might get the name of the "actual" motherboard manufacturer if you can navigate into the BIOS and remove the
" DELL" welcome screen at startup, to see the actual BIOS start screen. "DELL" usually uses some brand name manufacturer
to make the motherboards, and information "may" be available on
the original website, for that, or some very similar board.
( ex. Dell uses a real "INTEL" motherboard, origianally a P7AM-QV, and has intel modify it specifically for DELL, labelling it
the P7AM-Q33 , but they are essentially almost identical, so the
manual on the INTEL website will give you a great deal of info.)
Dell " may" have the manuals, the drivers, the updates, the BIOS
updates, and links to the INTEL chipset, all there for you... ( hopefully )

If this is not an INTEL motherboard, and just "uses" INTEL chips,
then you may find the motherboard by opening the case and shining a light on the white print to see if it has a model number and reveision number.

You can also use software to go in and read the BIOS and chips to see if this will give better information...

TRY the Dell First.
Then try the sofware ( listed in a similar answer below )
Then try looking at the motherboard...
Try the INTEL chipset update.

You will probably be ok, since DELL is a big corporation, and you should find all the info you need on the web...

Once you have updated the motherboard, then you install the video card. Then, you go to the Video card WEBSITE and update
the just- installed driver, sice they update VERY frequently !

Save all the updates to everything an a CD so that you do not have to find everything again !

HERE IS A SIMILAR QUESTION with some information that
might help.....

________________________________________________
________________________________________________

How exacly can i tell what company manufactured my motherboard?

I recently added a new hard drive (as a slave drive) for extra memory. but the video files i have on the new hard drive skip and is kinda choppy the first time you play the video. i was told to try to update the driver for my motherboard but i dont know who manufactured it.


This is a common problem...

(( ladyfirst, in her answer below gives a link to a 4 meg download,
free, that I tried, and like hundreds of similar applications,
may interrogate your BIOS, and analyze your system, and
may give you details simply by running the program... I would
suggest trying her method. I ran it on my computer, and it was
VERY good at comming up with " MOST" data, although, digging
up the specific REVISION NUMBER of the BIOS may be out,
still, you might be given the actual www.address of the manufacturer to search for more info....

Try these links with the software, and see if they all agree, :

EVEREST

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

COMPUTER CENSUS

http://tucows.com/preview/502506

ASTRA32

http://tucows.com/preview/348128

MvPCinfo

http://tucows.com/preview/404367

(( there are dozens of these types of programs, and you can
use yahoo search or dogpile.com search to find a great many more... _)

Iff this fails, then you
can just open the case and, if lucky, can read the manufacturer's
name and model number somewhere on the board using a
bright light. You may even find the REVISION number. Sometimes the information is obscured by the AGP card or
a PCI card, but these are not difficult to momentarily remove....
otherwise, follow BELOW : ))

[[ Another tip.... if you are "UPDATING" your motherboard with
a BIOS FLASH, proceed very carefully. Make certain your floppy
is 100% CLEAN ( use a floppy cleaner disk with white fiber disk,
and alcohol bottle in the kit... sometimes available at the dollar store, but well worth it... test a few read/ writes, and a scandisk
on a newly written floppy ).
SAVE the old BIOS , even though you don't have to. AND, if
ANYTHING GOES WRONG DO NOT SHUT OFF THE POWER...!
If there is a disk read / write error, get another disk, on another
computer, and use the other disk ( which the computer would not know was a new one, and continue... ) You can even, CAREFULLY exchange the floppy macnine itself.... ANYTHING, but remove the
POWER... ! ! ! Read the instructions carefully, and print them out. And, again, it is vitally important to know the correct revision number, and make certain that it is valid for the BIOS revision
you are using to update....
It is also a good idea to have a battery backup UPS running
during the BIOS FLASH, so that a tiny power glitch would not
destroy your BIOS, --- if anything went wrong, your entire motherboard would be useless...

After upgrading the BIOS, then you can use the CHIPSET upgrade software that will update things, typically like AGP to
PCI bus drivers, PCI drivers, clock timing upgrades, and sound,
lan, modem, etc. drivers if any are onboard. ]]

IFF these methods fail, then:

1/ Rip apart your entire computer and read BOTH sides of the
motherboard and all the sticky labels, particularly on the
first side of the last card slot, and write down all the numbers and
names, and hope that there is something in ENGLISH, that
looks like a model name, and a revision number.
If you are lucky, the NAME is in bold white screen print on the
top, and the REVISION number is printed in a corner somewhere
or on a sticky label on or near the BIOS, with something like
rev. 1.02b
If you are experienced you can sometimes tell who probably made the board by the colours, the way the traces are made,
the configuration, the chips used etc, and some of the codes
written on the sticky labels...

Sometimes the label and model numbers are on the BACK,
which is a real pain, since you "HAVE " to remove the board
itself...

2/ you can try to stop the BIOS BOOT sequence at the start of
the BOOT procedure and read the information on the screen.
Sometimes it will STATE IN ENGLISH the model and make
and revision number as part of the BIOS routine,,,,, JOY
Sometimes it will just give you a long BIOS REVISION
code
like Ac00287-BC8djJ-0030300228-12kidj or something, and
you have to go to the BIOS manufacturers website and
look up the code on a list.... ( AMIBIOS, etc. )

I answered this question just a while ago, repeated here with
more details....

__________________________________________________

When you first start your computer, how do you get the screen to stop so you can read what it says.?

I am not talking about getting to the bios.
Additional Details

6 days ago
The reason I am asking this is my computer cannot see my cdrom drive. One of the answers somewhere was to look when the computer starts and see if it lists the cd rom drive.

6 days ago
The pause break works. How do I get it to resume loading after I hit pause break?

( to resume, press ENTER )

4 answers
You've already answered this question.

robin_graves
1 week ago

Report Abuse

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

I put your question on my watch list.
The answer to hit the PAUSE / BREAK is 'sort of "
correct, once the first page is finished and the POST
starts, pause will usually work, but the VERY first
screen, with the BIOS revision number usually
blinks so fast that it is impossible to stop on
many computers. This BIOS revision number is
often a key to determining what revision, what
manufacturer, and what company the computer
is .... I have hundreds of computers, and there is
no "rule " to get the screen to stop.... Sometimes,
pause may work... but usually on 286's or 386's,
-- the new computers are too fast to control...

(( Since I have ... HUNDREDS .... of computers,
most come with no manual, and HUNDREDS of these
motherboards have NO MARKINGS whatsoever that
cross reference to any known motherboard by any known
manufacturer. In fact, countless mothrboards are
illegal clones, first commissioned by a large, known
corporation, and then "cloned" cheaply at the factory,
deliberately hidding all identifying markings. The only way
to track down what the board was originally, is to get the
printed BIOS version on the first screen, and go to
the BIOS manufacturer's website, and cross reference
the BIOS # with known listings. In many cases, the
sequence, even then, will list A046B1A-004124 as " other",
or, the cloning assembly line has put in a BIOS revision
number that is not listed at all... Since many of the hundreds
of motherbaords I bump into, are strange, and from around the
world, there are many instances where the Manufacturer,
the Board Name and the Revision number white printed
clearly on the board, mean nothing, with no web search, and
no technical website postings finding anything or anyone who has
heard of the company or the board... There is an exception to
every rule { all motherboards are clearly identified in white
printing }, and I get a great many of the unidentifiable boards,
simply BECAUSE, no one else knows what to do with them !
see my website, kidbots.com ))

I hope someone comes up with something I have never
seen before.... good luck.

robin

Asker's Rating:
Most informative answer.

____________________________________________

As you can see, finding a manufacturer is not a guaranteed process... the odds are, though, that you will find the information
easily - strange boards are getting rare...

FINALLY...

If updating the BIOS, the DRIVERS, and the software viewer
and CODECS does not work, then you have an issue, not with
the software, but with the hardware - is the harddrive a fast one
with large cache? is the cabelling the best configuration?, do you have an ATA drive needing an 80 wire cable, and have only installed a 40 wire? Is there another mechanical and BIOS
location that allows the hardddrive to function faster? Are there
settings in your Operating System that allocate more RAM to the
software viewer, so that it runs faster? Is there another Viewer program that is more efficiently coded that will speed up the
transfere reate, so that the videos run smoothly? etc. etc....

There may be other issues here that are not immediately apparent. On the new drive, go to the manufacturers website and
see how much cache ram is on the Drive board, and what
the RPM ( Pevolutions per minute ) speed is. 7,200 is normal
today, and higher end drives are 10,000 RPM. 5,000 is middle of
the road, and 3,000's are slow, etc. You can compare the same
read times and latency and RPM for the new drive and your old
one to see if there is a major performance drop.
I would also search around for better designed viewer software.
There are any out there, and you might be surprised with much
better performance.

_____________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Some of the information above is for CD's and other problems,
but the routine for finding out who made you motherboard,
is the same.... hopefully DELL will have everything laid out for you...


hope this helps

robin

Answer 2

OK..you have a dell computer and you need to update the motherboard APG controller. This is part of the Intel NorthBridge Chipset of your motherboard, the 440BX chipset to be exact. Since you did not mention your Dell model of computer, I can't give you the specific Dell webpage. This is an old computer, but I did find the drivers for the chipset on the Intel website. Since you did not mention your OS, I put the top level link for your chipset here. Download the Chipset ID software first and run that to be sure you are getting the correct drivers. If this is the correct chipset then the last time the driver was updated was 5/6/2002.

Answer 3

You should have the drivers disk that came with your computer or motherboard. Make sure all the drivers are installed from that. You should have a disk that came with your video card that has the drivers on it also. Install those.

Are you sure that the video card you bought is securely installed?
Is it compatible with your Operating System?
Is it 4X or 8X. There is a difference. Is it backwards compatible?

You can also check the Computer Manufacturer's, motherboard, and video card manufacturers' websites for compatibility and drivers which should be better than the ones that came with your OS or computer.

Another thing you can do if you have drivers is to go to your Device Manager and uninstall your Display adapter. Then either hit Action and Scan for Hardware Changes, or shut down and reboot your computer.

Windows will find any new Plug and Play devices for you.

FYI: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Intel+8w443BX&btnG=Google+Search

Good luck.

Answer 4

try the microsoft update site; there check the 'custom" update box... this will then scan your system and if there is something for your particular card, it will show up, download and install as per usual.