Can't recognise video, audio and ethernet

**pannonian** · August 18, 2011, 03:35 PM

I have an off the shelf PC whose details are laid somewhere in some dusty corner. After the boot drive went down, I reinstalled it with Win XP pro on a new drive. Unfortunately, it doesn't recognise the video card, audio card or ethernet card, so I'm stuck with primitive video and audio and no network or internet (on that machine anyway) until I can figure out a way of solving the problem. And because I've filed the details away somewhere, I don't know what the cards are either. Is there any way of finding out what they are?

PS. I can access the old boot drive and its windows folder.

**Magicman2051** · August 18, 2011, 03:45 PM

Crack it open and take a look?

**irishron** · August 18, 2011, 03:50 PM

Look on the motherboard for make and model.

**Magicman2051** · August 18, 2011, 03:52 PM

There is probably some sort of fancy software way to figure out what it all is, but I'm a hardware guy so...

**pannonian** · August 18, 2011, 04:02 PM

I'll try that. And the cradle for the drive is loose, thanks to my shoddy rescrewing, so I'll need to be careful when I open it up. Damn my clumsiness.

**Magicman2051** · August 18, 2011, 04:03 PM

Should probably make sure that all the screws are back in place and securely fastened.

**Taiji** · August 19, 2011, 07:03 AM

In that dusty corner you might find a drivers disk.

**PoleCat** · August 19, 2011, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by pannonian

I have an off the shelf PC whose details are laid somewhere in some dusty corner.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

PS. I can access the old boot drive and its windows folder.

Since you have access to the old Windows folder have you thought of going into the Device Manager and tried updating the drivers by browsing through the old system32 folder?

Otherwise maybe you can use cpu-z to ID the mobo and video and search the 'net. Good luck!