• Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Topic: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Ok guys heres the thing, I was/am toying with the idea of making my own driverpacks but im bothered about duplicating files/drivers.

Now i know that this can be sorted out by editing certain files etc etc but i have over 2GB's of drivers!!! they all slipstream into nLite direct no probs but i wud like them in packs since they are smaller, they also contain a lot of SATA drivers (text-mode) which is not supported yet for the 3rd party packs.

Which is really annoying for me since all my drivers are in a single folder (makes it easier for nLite) if i knew then what i know now i wud have kept them all seperate since then i cud have used nLite for the text mode drivers and created packs for the rest but hey ho hindsight is such a wonderful thing lol!!

So.. what i was thinking was how about i upload all the drivers i have to say rapidshare or mediafire as 7z files (when compressed they get down to about 400mb for ALL the drivers) and then you guys can see whats there and incorperte them into the existing packs as new update for the packs?

Thanks for listening..

Stoner

Last edited by Stoner (2008-09-30 05:10:49)

  • OverFlow
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

As far as i know were not missing any drivers... so why would we embark on this journy...

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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

OverFlow wrote:

As far as i know were not missing any drivers... so why would we embark on this journy...

Well i did a bit of looking and the driverpacks when decompressed are about 1600MB's in size the drivers that i have got are currently are 2.16GB's in size now i know that there is probably files that are not needed (like text files and such) so there is about a 500MB difference in terms of overall size which for drivers is huge since they are generally so small.

As for "why would we embark on this journey" im not saying that you should do by any means im simply putting this idea forward to you to try and give something back to something from which i have benifited a lot from! (trying to help sorta thing)

If you decide to go ahead with the idea then fantastic!!! big_smile and if not then no worries there either im just trying to help big_smile

Stoner

PS - The drivers I have also included the graphics drivers for the Acer 7720G laptop with the nVidia GeForce 8400M  GS graphics card in (i have read a lot of people trying to find them and i have big_smile ) and one for an ATi which is currently not in the driverpacks.

Last edited by Stoner (2008-09-30 16:19:58)

  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Errr... right ok... ive made a rather big c**k up here somewhat... it turns out i have duplicated about 600MB's of drivers within my drivers folder (after much checking) sorry about that there!!!! big_smile ("We all make mistakes" said the Dalek climbing of the dustbin) im still workin out how i did it but hey ho u live n learn i guess...

Sorry folks sad

Stoner

  • OverFlow
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

well after three r four years of people asking us to add stuff we rarely get request for drivers anymore (except updates) so based on that i think we cover over 95% of all hardware (at least the hardware people buy and use)

Size has nothing to do with it - its all about the HWIDS... you should know that by now...

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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

OverFlow wrote:

well after three r four years of people asking us to add stuff we rarely get request for drivers anymore (except updates) so based on that i think we cover over 95% of all hardware (at least the hardware people buy and use)

Size has nothing to do with it - its all about the HWIDS... you should know that by now...

Im still learning m8 im still fairly new to all this but have learnt a lot from everybody.

HWID's? im assuming you mean the ID of the hardware installed in the system (like i said im learning sad ) chances are then most of the drivers i have you probably already have in the packs but i tried it without them (my drivers) and for some reason it wouldnt install the battery (on a lappy.. really weird)

I also made a driverpack for the graphics which it slipstreamed in no probs but it wud not install the drivers at all... any ideas (when i intergrate the graphics with nLite works no problem)

Thanks for listening anyway big_smile

Stoner.

  • OverFlow
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

let's put it like this... we ahve been doing this for many years and we havent been able to get the latest packs out for over two months.

Its not easy, there are no absolutes, drivers are not written the way they should be... for many reasons hundreds of your drivers will fail.

I am not trying to discourage you from trying but about three years from now you should be able to catch up to where DriverPacks is now... wink

If you find that we dont include a particular driver just ask wink

we will eeither help you add it or we will - that is why were here

thanks for asking - I'll help you if i can

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  • Stoner
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

OverFlow wrote:

let's put it like this... we ahve been doing this for many years and we havent been able to get the latest packs out for over two months.

Its not easy, there are no absolutes, drivers are not written the way they should be... for many reasons hundreds of your drivers will fail.

I am not trying to discourage you from trying but about three years from now you should be able to catch up to where DriverPacks is now... wink

If you find that we dont include a particular driver just ask wink

we will eeither help you add it or we will - that is why were here

thanks for asking - I'll help you if i can

Ok buddy thanks a lot smile

  • OverFlow
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Don't ever stop thinking outside the box!

It's an excellent quality, nurture it sir!

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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

I always try to think outside the box its surprsing what you can come up when you put your mind to it! smile

I will (at some point) upload all my drivers that i have to a hoster like ifile.it or something similar then you can have a look at them and see since if they are all included in the driver packs then it will reduce down the size of my XP install.

Please let me know if this is ok to do?

Thanks for your time Overflow much appreciated.

Stoner.

  • OverFlow
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

a very kind offer...

we add drivers when they are reported as missing...
since no missing drivers have been reported, then there are no missing drivers wink

we are aware that some drivers do have newer versions out and the team is working on upgradeing them.
that is the hard part, getting them to coexist.

As i said previously there is no sense in compareing thousands of drivers to each other when it is a given that DriverPacks is a complete set of drivers. I say this because we get a million downlloads a month and never get any reports of missing drivers. what more proof do you need?

on a different note we only add drivers from OEM sources...
that being the case a list of links to OEM files would be the thing to have.
not that we don't trust people - it is just good policy to only use files we have downloaded ourselfs from an OEM.

as always, have a great day

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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

OverFlow wrote:

a very kind offer...

we add drivers when they are reported as missing...
since no missing drivers have been reported, then there are no missing drivers wink

we are aware that some drivers do have newer versions out and the team is working on upgradeing them.
that is the hard part, getting them to coexist.

As i said previously there is no sense in compareing thousands of drivers to each other when it is a given that DriverPacks is a complete set of drivers. I say this because we get a million downlloads a month and never get any reports of missing drivers. what more proof do you need?

on a different note we only add drivers from OEM sources...
that being the case a list of links to OEM files would be the thing to have.
not that we don't trust people - it is just good policy to only use files we have downloaded ourselfs from an OEM.

as always, have a great day

When you say OEM sources do you mean somewhere like say driverguide.com? I have a few missing drivers which are for lappys but i have had to download one of them the Packard Bell site and the other I had to find a compatable one for my graphics card in my lappy.

Out of curiousity do you per chance have any idea on how many drivers that are in the packs? Would you say its over 50,000 or so? Im asking since I have these seperate drivers which have 50,000 drivers in but if the driverpacks have 50,000 in then its a bit pointless me using these other drivers since all its doing is bulking up my XP DVD (due to me using the WPI)

Thanks for your time Overflow very much appreciated from you and everybody on here for that matter! I have been having problems creating my own packs but I will post that problem in the right section later on when I can get a bit organised lol!

Thanks again Overflow wink

Stoner.

  • Helmi
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Stoner wrote:

When you say OEM sources do you mean somewhere like say driverguide.com?

No, we mean either HW manufacturer sites (e.g. intel.com, nvidia.com, amd.com etc.) or system manufacturers and assemblers (i.e. dell.com, hp.com etc.)

I have a few missing drivers which are for lappys but i have had to download one of them the Packard Bell site and the other I had to find a compatable one for my graphics card in my lappy.

Point out what they are and link to the DL site and they may be added.
Use the HWID tool in my sig to help you on this task.

Out of curiousity do you per chance have any idea on how many drivers that are in the packs? Would you say its over 50,000 or so?

Uh, no idea, you could check the driver listing on the main page for that.
Then again, a single driver may support numerous devices. so it depends on how you count.

Im asking since I have these seperate drivers which have 50,000 drivers in but if the driverpacks have 50,000 in then its a bit pointless me using these other drivers since all its doing is bulking up my XP DVD

Well, same numers do not necessarily mean same files.
It could just be 50,000 different files so adding them in would bring you to 100,00 total, or it could be the same files (that would be great because you could easily identify them using a file comparison/duplicate tool) or of differen versions (in that case, only the newer one would be installed so it doesn't hurt too much).

(due to me using the WPI)

You could always have WPI run from an HDD (USB drive maybe) or a network source or even a different DVD; even if that may mean a manual disc exchange.
As you could also install XP directly off a USB drive (http://www.msfn.org/board/Install-XP-from-USB-f157.html), space should not really be the issue, but I can understand that you want to cut down on duplicates (we also hate PCI ID duplicates wink).

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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

1. Ok no worries then any i find that i need I will make sure to make notes and let you know about them on the forum to be added in or at least for you guys to look at (i would like to help you guys in some way since the driverpacks have solved so many of my problems)

2. I cant remember where I got them from.. one of them was from Packard Bell but I cant remember what it was now lol the graphics ones for my lappy i can send you since they are not supported by my manufactuer. They are the graphics drivers for the Acer Aspire 7720G with the GeForce 8400M GS 256MB card.

3. If you dont know then you dont know m8 no worries wink

4. So in you experience then would it be worth to me to just bin the drivers I have save for my lappy ones etc and just use the driverpacks?

5. I have the autorun for the WPI so im toying with the idea of using that but will see how things are...

Thanks for your time buddy much appreciated!!

Stoner.

  • Helmi
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Stoner wrote:

4. So in you experience then would it be worth to me to just bin the drivers I have save for my lappy ones etc and just use the driverpacks?

Yeah, probably.
If it's really just this single machine, it shouldn't be too much effort to just install with the DriverPacks and no other drivers and see how it goes.
Any devices missing you can then report here and have the drivers added so on the next release of the DP in question, you'd be 100% covered.

After all, it's your time, but personally, it think it works faster going from there, maybe adding the missing pieces into your own 3rd party DriverPack (for until they get officially added).
Of course, it takes one test install on the machine you want to put it on for real, but that definately frees the space of these 50,000 drivers that you certainly do not need for only a single machine.

That said, if it's really just one, you may also consider using just the DPMS and prune all other packs of drivers you do not need or, once again, creating your own 3rd party DriverPack for these.
The DriverPacks were created with the intention in mind to have ONE XPCD/DVD that can be used to install on any machine you encounter (most likely large deployments as found in big companies that do not have a unified HW equipment or for tech support jobs).
It certainly is a bit of overkill for a single machine but if you do not mind the "wasted" space, it does not do any harm.

5. I have the autorun for the WPI so im toying with the idea of using that but will see how things are...

That's how I do it - using a seperate DVD for WPI (also means I can update that independantly).
As I always disable autorun, it's not much use for me, however, I do not mind placing the DVD in the drive, after all, you have to reboot the machine at least once anyway to finsih the process so I have to attended the machine anyhow.

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Coming up next - useful links:
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  • Stoner
  • DriverPacks newbie and Hero of the day 12/15/08
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Re: New Drivers for the existing packs?

Well the thing is i do a lot of PC repairs and got fed up with finding drivers for systems and things hence why i want so many drivers in my version of XP but in this case i think you are probably right and i will remove the extra drivers save for certain ones and see how it goes from there.

Thanks for your time Helmi much apprecitated!

Stoner.