FindComputerStuff

If you ever had to format and reinstall that OLD, OLD PC, i guess you weren’t able to find the drivers, right? Well, usually if you give this job to a “computer engineer”, he won’t want to tell you he can’t (and is not willing to) find the sound, vga, modem etc drivers.

So what happens? He burdens your old PC with windows XP, hoping XP’s expansive driver database and wondrous hardware detection will do the trick. It works, yes, but now your PC is SLOW, because it was “designed for windows 98″ (check the labels/stickers on the pc’s casing). If you challenge him, he’ll tell you “upgrade your computer sir/ma’am. Buy a (outrageously expensive or unaffordable) Pentium III or Pentium 4 PC”.

Which makes things easy for him (Lazy!) because he will just put Windows XP on it again! Ok. So what am I saying? You dont have to be forced to put up with a burdensome OS which will eat up at least 96MB RAM, 1.2GB of your (probably) small harddisk, and demand a fast processor.

Compare with win98: 64MB is just right, 202MB full install, 233MHz processor is fine by him! But the driver database/hardware detection is not so good. So we go to DriverGuide. Believe me, there is no device driver in this world that i have not found on their site. You have to register with them to download any drivers, though. And in case you don’t have the wizard ability to identify your driver manufacturer/model, they have a driver toolkit that detects the hardware in your system so that you can search for the proper drivers, upgrade your existing ones or even back up your drivers - cool, isnt it?

The next time somebody tries to force you to install windows XP on a low-end machine, ask him why. And don’t fall for the “the OS is too old” complaint - tell him to find and download the drivers, or find them yourself. And what are you doing with such an old PC, anyway?