Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Am just wondering if any of you guys could offer your advice on the cleanest way to remove drivers, prior to update.

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Hold down Ctrl during boot and select safe mode from the menu.

Remove any drivers from add/remove progs and the device manager.

HTH...

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

what are you wanting to update , i only ask because i cant remember having to uninstall a driver to update it , apart from nvidia graphics drivers :)

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Well, its a long story, but I've recently upgraded my motherboard and RAM (from 256SD to 512DDR), put it all together, and it started up fine, except XP had a few device/driver issues and I had to scrabble around for various files and drivers. All is working now but performance seems to be worse than before, I suspected some dubious driver combinations and so wish to do a fresh install.

However, should you have any other ideas as to why things are a bit slow I would be happy to hear!

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

you reinstalled windows didnt you , you didnt just bung your old hdd onto the new board did you :eek:

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

:eek: - that what you need to do !

A fresh install is a must - removing everything in device manager in safe mode may work !

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Errrrrr :blush:

When we say fresh intstall, do we mean a reformat and install or just use one of the options when booting from the XP disc, because I really don't want to lose all of my (ahem, legitimate) software installs.

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

I don't even do it for them....should I?

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

flatten it and start again , sorry :(

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

We're getting a new machine with 1024MB Ram in it and I want to take 512MB out of it when it arrives and place it in mine, will I need to make any changes to the BIOS or anything, or can I just switch them over and expect it to work?

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Now that I've wiped my tear filled eyes I guess I'd better get on with it. Can you recommend a good partition size just for XP?

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

It will work depending on the age of the older machine (basically if the RAM is DDR and the old Motherboard is expecting SDRAM. it won't worK).

Assuming the RAM is compatible with the old M/Board, the BIOS should pick it up..

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

The older machine is a Dell 4550 and the new one is a 4600, the old one was bought last year, I think its DDR, how can I check, will Sandra tell me?

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

Use the whole disk
Partitioning is for dos or girlies who couldn't live if they had to reformat their drive and lose everything :D

Re: Cleanest removal of drivers
 

According to the Specs I found, the Dell 4550 has DDR Ram. You can check it in Sandra by going to the System Summary, then looking at the "Memory Bus Speed". If it displays "2x" before the speed measurement (ie my board displays "2 x 134MHz") then it is DDR Ram.

If that's the case with yours, the memory should work.