Installing New Western Digital HD + Installing Windows XP

[Mr.Marui]

Hi,

I recently put in a new hard drive, and used my Alienware XP pro cd to install a fresh image.

(I don't have the IBM branded cd because I bought my X31 off ebay)

Upon booting, I inserted my USB key (which has all the IBM drivers on it), and went through each setup wizard for the motherboard, video card, lan card, wireless card, etc...

Then I rebooted as instructed, but to my surprise nothing registered. Going to device manager, I noticed that there were still those yellow question marks by many devices.

I'm completely lost as I'm positive at least some of these drivers work because I've used them in the past to update without issue.

Is there some sort of proprietary issue going on with my Alienware XP professional disc with IBM thinkpad hardware?

Thanks for your help!

[losmeme]

The process to install drivers from IBM is not as straight forward as it may seem.

Once you download and unpack them by launching the .exe file, the drivers are placed in the folder: c:\Drivers. You then have to go into each individual driver folder and install manually from there using the .exe files in each folder.

Not sure why they never just made the script to unpack AND install at the same time, but the upside is that you have a folder with all the IBM drivers in it if you reinstall the OS. Just copy that Drivers folder to the hard drive and reinstall. Saves time re-downloading.

You could also download System Update for your system, it will identify needed drivers, download them AND install them.

[Mr.Marui]

The process to install drivers from IBM is not as straight forward as it may seem.

Once you download and unpack them by launching the .exe file, the drivers are placed in the folder: c:\Drivers. You then have to go into each individual driver folder and install manually from there using the .exe files in each folder.

Not sure why they never just made the script to unpack AND install at the same time, but the upside is that you have a folder with all the IBM drivers in it if you reinstall the OS. Just copy that Drivers folder to the hard drive and reinstall. Saves time re-downloading.

You could also download System Update for your system, it will identify needed drivers, download them AND install them.

Ah yes, I got it work finally. Thanks so much for your help!

Wow I never realized the extraction process did not also install. In the past with other computer vender's drivers... they did both namely Alienware, Dell, HP, etc....

Thanks