Dell Chipset Utility driver - necessary with reinstall of XP?

[chipandernie]

I've just reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP SP2 on a Dell
Dimension 4700. (What a pain that was removing the hidden Dell partition
and all their recovery tools I needed a Win 98 bootdisk with the latest DOS
Format utility for NTFS partitions).

I started reloading other software and drivers for all the peripherals.
As soon as I installed this, I had trouble:

Chip Set: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility, Driver,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.0.1.1002, A09

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s
=dhs&releaseid=R79695&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=104426


The USB mouse locked and wouldn't move even when booted in safe mode.
I had to use the keyboard to do a system restore to a point about one hour
earlier.

When I checked the troubleshooting part of the readme file for the utility,
sure enough it mentioned conflicts with USB mouse and keyboard devices.
I'm assuming "A09" in the utility description refers to the BIOS.
Therefore, if I upgrade to A10 BIOS, am I correct in thinking I shouldn't
load this utility upgrade anyway? It says optional on the site.

If someone has some knowledge of this particular upgrade, please explain
how it would improve the performance of the computer.


One other question. Since the OS seems to be running perfectly without it,
doesn't Windows XP load its own driver or set of compatible drivers for the
Intel Chipset on the mobo?

 

[Alex Flaherty]

I've just reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP SP2 on a Dell
Dimension 4700. (What a pain that was removing the hidden Dell partition
and all their recovery tools I needed a Win 98 bootdisk with the latest DOS
Format utility for NTFS partitions).

I started reloading other software and drivers for all the peripherals.
As soon as I installed this, I had trouble:

Chip Set: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility, Driver,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.0.1.1002, A09

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s
=dhs&releaseid=R79695&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=104426

The generally held convention is that the chipset driver should be
installed prior to ANY other drivers.

Did you install other drivers first?

 

[S.Lewis]

I've just reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP SP2 on a Dell
Dimension 4700. (What a pain that was removing the hidden Dell partition
and all their recovery tools I needed a Win 98 bootdisk with the latest
DOS
Format utility for NTFS partitions).

I started reloading other software and drivers for all the peripherals.
As soon as I installed this, I had trouble:

Chip Set: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility, Driver,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.0.1.1002, A09

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s
=dhs&releaseid=R79695&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=104426


The USB mouse locked and wouldn't move even when booted in safe mode.
I had to use the keyboard to do a system restore to a point about one hour
earlier.

When I checked the troubleshooting part of the readme file for the
utility,
sure enough it mentioned conflicts with USB mouse and keyboard devices.
I'm assuming "A09" in the utility description refers to the BIOS.
Therefore, if I upgrade to A10 BIOS, am I correct in thinking I shouldn't
load this utility upgrade anyway? It says optional on the site.

If someone has some knowledge of this particular upgrade, please explain
how it would improve the performance of the computer.


One other question. Since the OS seems to be running perfectly without
it,
doesn't Windows XP load its own driver or set of compatible drivers for
the
Intel Chipset on the mobo?

Have a look at device manager.

 

[Ben Myers]

Absolutely 1000% accurate! Install chipset drivers first, IMMEDIATELY after
installing the operating system... Ben Myers

 

[chipandernie]

The generally held convention is that the chipset driver should be
installed prior to ANY other drivers.

Did you install other drivers first?

I think I installed the video adapter driver.

 

[Alex Flaherty]

I think I installed the video adapter driver.

Wak wak oops.

 

[chipandernie]

wrote:

Wak wak oops.

If the troubleshooting part of the chipset readme.txt indicates that
there's a conflict with a USB mouse device, as does Dell's support area,
does it really make sense to install this particular utility?

What exactly would this upgrade do that isn't being done by using MS XP SP2
default drivers?

 

[Ben Myers]

Alex,

Good question. Windows XP, no matter which service pack, includes only drivers
for motherboards which existed back when Windows XP was first shipped. In my
experience, this includes only the early Socket 423 motherboards plus Pentium
3's, of course, and some AMD-type chipsets. Motherboards with Intel CPUs and
any one of the 845, 850, 865, 875, or 900-series chipsets do not have drivers on
the XP CD to support them correctly. The result is that chipsets which depend
on the motherboard chipset, i.e. ALL of them, are highly likely to work
incorrectly.

The so-called default motherboard chipset drivers installed by Windows when it
cannot find the right drivers is VERY VERY basic, and they do not necessarily
mesh with the other devices in the system. With XP, MIcrosoft made some
progress with its dumbed down default motherboard chipset drivers which
communicate with IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives using virtually any motherboard
chipset. With earlier versions of Windows, if you somehow did not copy the
chipset and other device drivers onto the hard drive before installing Windows,
then your CD-ROM drive would not work, and the only way to install them was via
floppy, which might not even have the capacity to contain a driver file.

As a general rule, immediately after installing Windows (ANY version or
release), go to Control Panel, click the System icon, then look at the list of
devices in Device Manager. If you see ANY devices with yellow or red markings
next to them, you need to install device drivers. If you ALWAYS start by
installing the drivers for the motherboard, you will not mess up the system
software.

And that's about it... Ben Myers

 

[chipandernie]

Good question. Windows XP, no matter which service pack, includes
only drivers for motherboards which existed back when Windows XP was
first shipped. In my experience, this includes only the early Socket
423 motherboards plus Pentium 3's, of course, and some AMD-type
chipsets. Motherboards with Intel CPUs and any one of the 845, 850,
865, 875, or 900-series chipsets do not have drivers on the XP CD to
support them correctly. The result is that chipsets which depend on
the motherboard chipset, i.e. ALL of them, are highly likely to work
incorrectly.

The so-called default motherboard chipset drivers installed by Windows
when it cannot find the right drivers is VERY VERY basic, and they do
not necessarily mesh with the other devices in the system. With XP,
MIcrosoft made some progress with its dumbed down default motherboard
chipset drivers which communicate with IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives using
virtually any motherboard chipset. With earlier versions of Windows,
if you somehow did not copy the chipset and other device drivers onto
the hard drive before installing Windows, then your CD-ROM drive would
not work, and the only way to install them was via floppy, which might
not even have the capacity to contain a driver file.

As a general rule, immediately after installing Windows (ANY version
or release), go to Control Panel, click the System icon, then look at
the list of devices in Device Manager. If you see ANY devices with
yellow or red markings next to them, you need to install device
drivers. If you ALWAYS start by installing the drivers for the
motherboard, you will not mess up the system software.

Very good advice. I'm going to take it and reinstall XP, then
immediately install the Chipset utility and see if there's no conflict
with the USB mouse this time.

One final question - should I install the A10 BIOS upgrade immediately
after installing Windows XP or after the chipset utility is run.

In my first message, I noted that the chipset utility has an A09 listed
in its description. I'm assuming that refers to the BIOS.

If I had to guess, I should probably run the Intel Chipset utility first:

Chip Set: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility, Driver,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.0.1.1002, A09

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s
=dhs&releaseid=R79695&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=104426

 

[ant]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

....

One other question. Since the OS seems to be running perfectly without it,
doesn't Windows XP load its own driver or set of compatible drivers for the
Intel Chipset on the mobo?

thank you people for your replies. i'm in a somewhat similar situation, in
that i have redone XP, but i still have a PCI device that comes up Yellow
in device manager, unfortunately there isn't any more information that seems
to help me narrow it down to what driver i need to reload. any ideas?

i'm hoping the answer doesn't include "Start over" because it'd bite to
have to wade through the upgrades i've already done again. or is there any
way to just redo the devices only?

thank you for your help,


ant

 

[CS]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

thank you people for your replies. i'm in a somewhat similar situation, in
that i have redone XP, but i still have a PCI device that comes up Yellow
in device manager, unfortunately there isn't any more information that seems
to help me narrow it down to what driver i need to reload. any ideas?

i'm hoping the answer doesn't include "Start over" because it'd bite to
have to wade through the upgrades i've already done again. or is there any
way to just redo the devices only?

I ran into a similar problem re-doing an older Dell for a friend. Some
devices which are integrated into the motherboard chipset are
difficult to identify. Do a Google search for the following program:

"Unknown Device Identifier" by Huntersoft

This will help to identify the unknown PCI device so that you can
locate a driver for it. The program is free.

 

[ant]

CS wrote:
....

I ran into a similar problem re-doing an older Dell for a friend. Some
devices which are integrated into the motherboard chipset are
difficult to identify. Do a Google search for the following program:

"Unknown Device Identifier" by Huntersoft

This will help to identify the unknown PCI device so that you can
locate a driver for it. The program is free.

thank you, i'll take a look for/at it tomorrow when i get back to working
on that machine.


ant

 

[Jay B]

just go to support.dell.com
enter your service tag
and go to the downloads for drivers
and look at the topics, and compare to what you have already installed.
could be a modem, or sound, or even usb, firewire, network, etc.
look for missing items from the list of what is already identified and
installed.
download the driver, and if there is a setup program in the folder that
is created, then run it, otherwise,
just click on the yellow item and say update driver, and point to the
folder that was specified. in some cases, you can do that before you
download from dell, and pick the option to automatically search the web
for the driver. that works half the time.

 

[WSZsr]

What Dell system?

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

...

thank you people for your replies. i'm in a somewhat similar situation,
in
that i have redone XP, but i still have a PCI device that comes up Yellow
in device manager, unfortunately there isn't any more information that
seems
to help me narrow it down to what driver i need to reload. any ideas?

i'm hoping the answer doesn't include "Start over" because it'd bite to
have to wade through the upgrades i've already done again. or is there
any
way to just redo the devices only?

thank you for your help,


ant

 

[WSZsr]

I experienced that same thing with my new XPS 410. Turns out it was not
available from my system download page. Had to go to the resource CD and
install the Viiv driver and software. That solved the mystery..

 

[chuckles_the_scary_clown]

thank you people for your replies. i'm in a somewhat similar situation, in
that i have redone XP, but i still have a PCI device that comes up Yellow
in device manager, unfortunately there isn't any more information that seems
to help me narrow it down to what driver i need to reload. any ideas?

I'll bet a euro to a dollar that it's a modem

 

[hdrdtd]

Well, interstingly enough I also recently bought a XPS 410. It came with
windows MCE, but I put a new hard drive in and did a fresh install of XP
Pro.

After installling all teh appropriate Dell drivers (both from the CD and
then updated from the web site), I also had a single exclamation point next
to 'unknown device' That I couldn't figure out.

One of the drivers that I had chosen not to reinstall, was the ViiV driver
because I thought it was releted to some new power management feature of the
core 2 Duo processors/chipset, and I normally don't use power management.

Tonight I'll go home and install the VIIV driver and see if indeed the
exclaimation mark goes away.

BTW, my XPS 410 does not have a modem.

And, the onboard audio is disabled in the BIOS because I have a X-Fi sound
card installed.

 

[Timothy Drouillard]

Nope. It wasn't the VIIV driver.

Well, interstingly enough I also recently bought a XPS 410. It came with
windows MCE, but I put a new hard drive in and did a fresh install of XP
Pro.

After installling all teh appropriate Dell drivers (both from the CD and
then updated from the web site), I also had a single exclamation point
next to 'unknown device' That I couldn't figure out.

One of the drivers that I had chosen not to reinstall, was the ViiV driver
because I thought it was releted to some new power management feature of
the core 2 Duo processors/chipset, and I normally don't use power
management.

Tonight I'll go home and install the VIIV driver and see if indeed the
exclaimation mark goes away.

BTW, my XPS 410 does not have a modem.

And, the onboard audio is disabled in the BIOS because I have a X-Fi sound
card installed.

 

[WSZsr]

Did you install the Viiv driver and the Viiv software both then reboot?

 

[Timothy Drouillard]

Aaaaaaaa

No.

i installed the driver. The system didn't ask for a re-boot, so I didn't
think to do it.

I didn't see any seperate software to install.

From what I recall, I thought the ViiV features were really designed to be
utilized when running Windows MCE, and I'm not. I'm ruunning XP Pro.

I shall try a reboot and see what happens...