Windows XP drivers suddenly stop working

[ColdAesthetics]

Hello everyone,

so I have that Dell Optiplex 390, which worked fine with XP for years.
But now, suddenly, after a reinstallation of XP after I messed my hard drive up (I tried to create multiboot with linux), all the drivers cannot be installed. Those are the same drivers I used when it was working back then.

Here are the errors of the drivers:
Intel Management Interface Driver: Some DLL File is missing.
Conexant Audio Driver: Installs for about 3 minutes, then says "no compatible hardware has been found".
Gigabyte Ethernet LAN Driver: Upon opening it, the PC instantly crashes without any error message or bluescreen. XP boots normally without asking for safe mode, even when crashing more than 3 times.
Intel Graphics Driver: System does not meet the minimum requirements.

I have 2 copies of Windows XP, one Home Edition with SP2, and a Professional with SP1. Tried both, same results.
Since I changed something in the BIOS lately, I restored it to defaults, but that didn't help either.

So, anyone an idea what the reason could be?
Maybe the drivers are corrupt or my usb-drive has problems?

I'm awaiting your answers,
Cold

[SistemaRayoXP]

I have an Optiplex 390 too, and I've seen this kind of problems not only in Windows XP, but also on other Windows versions and other hw configurations. First of all, usually the incompatibilities come from drivers not designed for the given OS (e.g. installing drivers too new for WinXPx86), but sometimes also because the given platform does not like the given drivers. I've seen the latter mostly with WinXPx64, as drivers for that platform are kind of an oddity, and it isn't always easy to find the right ones.

I recommend you to try other drivers. My personal advice is that you try with drivers from an application called 3DPChip, I've always got good results using it, no matter which OS or hw (that is, if drivers exists for the OS+HW combination, you can usually find them within 3DP). It's a pretty simple app, you download it, install it (but make sure to decline the installation of crapware it sometimes offers) and after that, start 3DPChip and click on each "category" to go to the download link of the drivers (hosted at 3DP website). You can usually find the drivers for the given hw for a lot of platforms starting from Win2k. The drivers provided by 3DP work I'd say 100% of time (personally haven't got problems with 'em), and are usually the latest version available for the given OS. The drivers are virus-free, but you are free to scan 'em if you wish.

Anyway, if you don't feel comfortable with using third party drivers, or want to make sure before trying out, try to re-download the drivers from Dell's website and select the exact OS in the page. It tends to default to the OS it detects from your browser/UA, so for example if you downloaded them earlier from a computer running Windows 7, maybe that's where the problem begun with the Dell page giving you drivers for Win7.

BTW, are you trying out XP 32 or XP 64?

[Darkstar]

I usually install drivers by unpacking the installers and updating the drivers directly in the device manager (with the "have disk" button). Advantage: You don't get all the crapware that drivers install (autostarting systray agents etc.), and you can check the INF file for compatibility (e.g. match PCI vendor/device IDs to your hardware etc.) if something doesn't work.

[SintezQ]

You said you were trying to install linux side by side with Windows XP. Are you sure linux hasn't made any changes to the filesystem or partitioning that might have produced such results? Where do you locate your drivers for installation? It might be worth trying to remove all partitions along with the MBR table and perform a clean install of Windows XP. Just my opinion on this situation.

[ColdAesthetics]

You said you were trying to install linux side by side with Windows XP. Are you sure linux hasn't made any changes to the filesystem or partitioning that might have produced such results? Where do you locate your drivers for installation? It might be worth trying to remove all partitions along with the MBR table and perform a clean install of Windows XP. Just my opinion on this situation.

Hi, sorry for not answering in a long time. Yes, I was trying to install Linux side by side with XP. Linux made some changes to the filesystem and partitioning, but I don't know exactly what it did do.
I tried to remove all partitions, and XP formatted the partition with NTFS. I reinstalled Windows XP 4 times, trying different disks, but always the same results.

I did a BIOS Settings Reset, re-formatted the whole hard drive, and tried multiple disks of XP.
Y'all telling me that my drivers are incompatible, and that I should search others, but those drivers are from the official Dell website, and they say it is compatible with XP. And they worked YEARS for me. And now, they suddenly don't work. Out of the nowhere!

And by the way: I thought and experimented for a while, and I noticed, that I installed Vista some weeks ago. Firstly, vista didn't like my hard drive because it was not in the "MBR" format. So I re-formatted it. After the setup, I very often got bluescreens. Because of that, I downgraded to XP, since it always worked perfectly on my machine. But after installing it, it had multiple error messages, and that was the moment, when the drivers stopped working.

So, in conclusion:
Windows Vista did something to my Optiplex 390. What did it do? I don't know, so I need to find out.

[infuscomus]

Make sure you have the latest XP drivers - https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-au ... 90/drivers

[Ringding]

Could that be caused by expired certificates used for driver code signing?

[ColdAesthetics]

Could that be caused by expired certificates used for driver code signing?

Not sure, but I don't think so. The error messages say, that DLL Files are missing, or that the hardware was not found. So I don't think that the certificate is the problem.

[ColdAesthetics]

Hi everyone, after a while I remembered that I always installed SP3 and other updates before installing the drivers, and finally:
It worked.

While the installation of the setup, it very often says "new device found", so that explains the "no compatible hardware has been found" error.

So, it was just a little mistake of mine, sorry!

Thanks everyone for participating at this discussion,
Cold