Motherboard drivers. Which ones are installed and which to use?

Damun · 20 Apr 2020

I was wondering - in case I need to do a clean install - whether to use motherboard drivers from the motherboard manufacturer or just use the ones that comes with windows 10.

Last time i built a PC was in the early days of Win 7 and i used motherboard drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer, installed in a specific order. From threads here in the forum it would seem that this is no longer necessary.

My current PC is a customizable "ready-to-use" PC, assembled by a shop and it came with Win 10 pre-installed.
I am trying to find out which drivers were used by the shop, by looking in device manager, to find out the version and manufacturer of the various drivers. I am doing this just so i have an idea what drivers i would have to use myself - in case i need to do a clean install.

Most drivers are MS-drivers - these are the built-in windows drivers.

Some drivers are produced by Intel Corp. (eg IDE/ATAPI controllers and storage controllers) - are those drivers that are produced by the motherboard manufacturer (in my case: Asus)?

Since most of the drivers on the manufacturers support page are new-ish (2019), would it be advisable to use those instead of "generic" MS-drivers?

Paul Black · 20 Apr 2020

Hello @Damun,

Damun said:

I was wondering - in case I need to do a clean install - whether to use motherboard drivers from the motherboard manufacturer or just use the ones that comes with windows 10.

To get a list of the installed drivers, you could run Options 12, 13, & 14 from my batch script here => Attachment 275448. They each create a .TXT file on your Desktop.

I hope this helps!

Damun · 20 Apr 2020

Paul Black said:

Hello @Damun,

To get a list of the installed drivers, you could run Options 12, 13, & 14 from my batch script here => Attachment 275448. They each create a .TXT file on your Desktop.

I hope this helps!

Thanks. This is great. Unfortunately I saw it a little too late, after i manually checked all drivers in device manager.

Paul Black · 20 Apr 2020

Hello @Damun,

Damun said:

Thanks. This is great. Unfortunately I saw it a little too late, after i manually checked all drivers in device manager.

You are welcome!

TV2 · 20 Apr 2020

Damun said:

Since most of the drivers on the manufacturers support page are new-ish (2019), would it be advisable to use those instead of "generic" MS-drivers?

I would say yes.
On a clean install (or even now) you should begin with the manufacturer's drivers for your motherboard. These drivers are developed specifically for the devices on the board and can provide functionality that would be ignored using a generic driver.
Windows will attempt to install any driver it finds that it thinks is better afterward, provided you have allowed it to so in your system settings.

Compare the list of driver versions you have compiled to the driver versions on the Asus page for your motherboard. This will tell you if the drivers were updated since the system was assembled.
Keep track of those that differ from the Asus ones, and you can address them one by one after the initial round of manufacturer driver installations.

Steve C · 21 Apr 2020

If the PC is currently supported then use the drivers from the manufacturer. You might still find Windows 10 installs a newer driver.

If your PC is old and no longer supported just rely on Windows 10 to find the drivers.

jimbo45 · 21 Apr 2020

Hi there

@Damun

@Steve C

This method is also good if you don't know either the manufacturer or what the hardware actually is :

You can see the manufacturers id etc if you go into the hardware - right mouse click in the piece of hardware in question-->properties-->events

Now you should see the driver name and the pci vendor details -- from those if you need a driver you can use the detail to search the web -- good also for unknown hardware --- no need to use things like drivermax etc etc.

Motherboard drivers. Which ones are installed and which to use?-hw1.png

Cheers
jimbo