Formated computer but deleted drivers...

Everything is working fine except I neglected to copy the drivers folder to CD. The driver disc that came with the notebook is only listing one model number (Inspiron ME051) and I have no idea what to do. Any help would be much appreciated!

 

I'm at dells website and it's listing the video driver as the GMA 945??? I thought this was a GMA 950!?!?!

 

945 is the chipset for the processor...which also has the 950 embedded directly on it. That's the right one.

 

So should I just screw the installation cd and install the drivers one by one off the website?

Edit: What the .... There's like 20 drivers for the display!!! I really don't know what to do right now!

 

Yup...those are the latest ones anyway. Just make sure you download the Dell NSS program as well (you need that for a few ports on the notebook to work correctly).

 

I would also suggest that you read this webpage on the suggested order for you to load drivers. I know it is the page for the old Intel GMA950, but all the same steps still apply and I use them on my nc8430 when needed.

http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-010475.htm

EDIT: Don't worry about the Chipset Utility or the Matrix program unless it is listed in Dell's driver pages.

 

What model of notebook do you have? And what graphics card do you have?

 

It's a 640m/e1405 with GMA 950. I just did a clean install of XP to undo the mess I made of the drivers...

Anyone know how to restore to factory settings? When formating the HDD, I left the recovery partition intact which should hold all the original drivers. Don't worry about bloatware... I'm just going to grab the drivers and do a another format. I tried hitting Ctrl+F11 on @ the Dell Logo but it didn't work.

 

the display drivers are only for external dell displays, the gma950 is the only video driver you need , unless of course your running a secondary dell display, which I'll assume you arent

 

the drivers that came with your notebook might not be the latest, personally I would get all my drivers from the site, its pretty straightforward to find the ones you need

 

Thanks everyone for all the help... I went through them one by one. It took a little while (almost 2 hours) but everything seems as smooth as silk. I'm having a little trouble with my wireless network, but I don't think it's the notebooks fault. I'm going to bed... I'm sure I'll be posting with my new baby 2moro.

Thanks again night and Ice

 

Glad to hear it's working okay now. Let me know if you need anything else.

 

Mike download the program dsrfix from here:
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.htm
if you left your recovery partition intact it will make it accessible again that is if you want to restore back to factory
jim

 

I think I'm going to have to take another crack at it!! I was going through my notebook when I decided to take a look at the program files directory. Sitting there were a bunch of folders named McAffee, Roxio etc. I guess I missed a step.

What I did was install the OS over the other one. Everything looked clean but it left a lot of residue. The only problem is, I couldn't delete the C:\ drive since there were files on there nessasary for the installation of the new os.

Thank you sooo much! I was wondering why ctrl+F11 wasn't doing anything... lol! I might just use this afterall... I'm having problems with my wireless as well so a look at the factory programs/settings would probably help.

 

mike on c drive there is a folder called dell and another folder called drivers these folders contain all the drivers you downloaded either burn these 2 folders to cd or burn the files you downloaded to cd this will save you time in the long run also when installing xp when you choose the partition there is an option to either format that partition or delete it you can delete the partition then format or just quick format it
jim

 

for a clean install, you have to format,when you install over an os, your basically just shoving crap under the rug, it'll look cleaner, but its not really

 

Yup...Ice is right: you need to completely format the drive for the best results. Even the quick format could *potentially* not get it all.