Motherboard Drivers

Laptops and desktop computers have one thing in common, which is the motherboard. The motherboard on a laptop is smaller than that on a desktop computer, and usually there is no way to upgrade a laptop motherboard, and as long as your laptop is working fine for you, you won’t want to change its laptop either. Such issues arise only when there is some fault.

The motherboard drivers that are necessary for particular desktop and laptop models can be identified in different ways. One way is to look at the computer model and then go to the manufacturer’s website and download the drivers from there. If drivers cannot be found anywhere, you could try on www.driverguide.com. You have to write in the search engine bar—“(laptop model driver) site:driverguide.com”. This will return results from the best websites for all kinds of drivers. Try it; driverguide.com has never let me down.

Another way is to use special programs such as Everest or SIW (System Information for Windows). Both these programs will show all available information about computer systems including motherboard type, processor and graphics card, etc.

Both programs are good but I prefer SIW because the program mainly focuses on the system information.

 If you are using a laptop, you need information on what is known as north and south bridges. These are two microchips that help the processor to work with the memory, the sound card, the hard disk, etc. These are also known as the chipset. Chipset drivers can also be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. Knowing the laptop model or the motherboard model number for desktops is enough. If your desktop is made by Dell, HP or Acer, you could even search from the manufacturer’s website directly by keying in information about the computer model number on the manufacturer’s website. You have to go to support or downloads and use the search form that’s present there.

If your computer doesn’t indicate model number of motherboard type, then you have to use the software application we mentioned above. Just remember that you need chipset drivers and not actually motherboard drivers.

One thing left to say is that you will mainly find that motherboard chipsets are from companies such as Intel, VIA or SIS.

Desktop motherboard numbers can be found near the PCI slots. These can consist of numbers or letters. Sometimes the motherboard manufacturer does not print the number. In such cases, you can get the motherboard type from the software application or you can simply read the numbers from the chip. The motherboard model is almost never printed on the laptop cases. Presently, you can find chipsets from VIA. In such cases, you can download the drivers from the VIA website.

It is common to go to the laptop manufacturer’s website when looking for laptop drivers. These are actually good places to find the laptop drivers. However, most of the times we only get older drivers on manufacturer’s websites that are made for a particular component. So, if something doesn’t work properly, just check the manufacturer’s website for the particular device.

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