USB PCI card and drivers

[Ed Y]

Using XP Home SP2 on a Dell Dimension 4300 with USB 1.1 ports. I'm going to
install a USB 2.0 PCI card from a outfit called Mercury. It has a Via 6202
card. The insts that came with the PCI card are terrible.

I'm not sure what to do about drivers after I install the PCI card. I'm
being told "don't do anything, XP will handle it" and I'm being told
"install the drivers from the CD that came with the card" although
procedures to do this are very vague.

Can anyone advise me???

 

[David Hollway [MVP]]

Using XP Home SP2 on a Dell Dimension 4300 with USB 1.1 ports. I'm going
to install a USB 2.0 PCI card from a outfit called Mercury. It has a Via
6202 card. The insts that came with the PCI card are terrible.

I'm not sure what to do about drivers after I install the PCI card. I'm
being told "don't do anything, XP will handle it" and I'm being told
"install the drivers from the CD that came with the card" although
procedures to do this are very vague.

Can anyone advise me???

Hi Ed,

Well, just install the card, and see what happens when you boot into Windows
XP. It may be that there's a driver for the USB controller chip built-in to
Windows, in which case it will be automatically installed and your ports
should work.
If there's no built-in driver, however, then Windows will report that it was
unable to install the new device. You now have two options:
1) Try connecting to Windows Update, to see if there's a driver on there,
or..
2) Go to the card manufacturer's website and look for the latest driver,
or..
3) When prompted for a driver, point the New Hardware wizard to the
appropriate folder on the CD. Somewhere on the CD there should be a ".INF"
file, probably with one or more .SYS files. This is the driver. Point
Windows towards this folder, and it should find the driver there and install
it.

Option (1) would be my favourite. Any driver on Windows Update will be WHQL
(Windows Hardware Quality Labs) approved by Microsoft, which tends to imply
greater-than-average driver reliability. A non-WHQL driver will still work,
of course, if that's all you can find, but you'll be warned by Windows when
installing it that "the driver is not signed" - in other words, it's not
been tested by MS.

I hope this helps..

 

[Ed Y]

Hi Ed,

Well, just install the card, and see what happens when you boot into
Windows XP. It may be that there's a driver for the USB controller chip
built-in to Windows, in which case it will be automatically installed and
your ports should work.
If there's no built-in driver, however, then Windows will report that it
was unable to install the new device. You now have two options:
1) Try connecting to Windows Update, to see if there's a driver on there,
or..
2) Go to the card manufacturer's website and look for the latest driver,
or..
3) When prompted for a driver, point the New Hardware wizard to the
appropriate folder on the CD. Somewhere on the CD there should be a ".INF"
file, probably with one or more .SYS files. This is the driver. Point
Windows towards this folder, and it should find the driver there and
install it.

Option (1) would be my favourite. Any driver on Windows Update will be
WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) approved by Microsoft, which tends to
imply greater-than-average driver reliability. A non-WHQL driver will
still work, of course, if that's all you can find, but you'll be warned by
Windows when installing it that "the driver is not signed" - in other
words, it's not been tested by MS.

I hope this helps..

Thanks for the info, David.

Installed the card and XP did it's thing. Driver's found and 2.0 ports work.
Almost too easy.

Ed