I have Windows 7 (full) if I do a clean install on my laptop my drivers will disappear right?
- Thread starter S Z
- Start date
Yes, if you perform a clean install of Windows 7, the hard drive will be formatted and everything will be deleted, including your drivers.However, Windows 7 includes a lot of drivers and will automatically detect most of your hardware. The installer will automatically install drivers for the hardware that it has a driver for making your computer mostly functional. To get the drivers for any hardware Windows 7 cannot detect, you need to visit the support website of the company that manufactured your laptop and download the drivers from there. I've included the support websites for the major laptop manufacturers below.
Kevin0707
New member
i did a fresh install and windows 7 installed 98% of the drivers which allowed me to update after installif you want collect info from your system and search for drivers to your system like nvidia .com for graphics (if this is yours )realtek if that is your sound the windows disc carries a large quantity of drivers
Windows 7 *may* recognize all or at least part of your hardware. The most important one is goig to be your network card, obviously, so that you can easily get to the net to get the other drivers.If all else fails you can go to the manufacturer's web site for each component (often Intel on many laptops) and download the drivers right there.Before you format and install, go into your device manager and see what brand and model the network card is, go to the website for the manufacturer and download the necessary W7 drivers from them, and put them on a flash drive. That way, if W7 does NOT recognize the network card drivers "out of the box" then you can at least get those drivers installed easily.You can get your drivers from the Support section of the company who produced your laptop.I would recommend checking there first to see if they have even produced Win7 drivers.In some instances Vista drivers will work for W7, in other cases they will not.
