Quote Originally Posted by MARK EG
Right I've never really understood this 100% but I definitely need to get my head around it all. Can anyone explain this to me?

I've just done a clean install of XP and i know that now the chipset drivers off the motherboard CD need to be installed.

1) What the hell are chipset drivers and why do they need to be installed exactly?

on the cd that's come with my p4p800 deluxe motherboard the drivers are listed like this:

a) Intel Chipset Inf Update prog
b) Intel Application Accelerator Driver
c) Via Raid Driver
d) ad1985 Audio Driver
e) USB 2.0 Driver
f) 3 Com Gigabit LOM (3c940) Driver

2) What do a,b,c and e exactly???? I know USB 2 is for the usb 2 card and the audio driver is for the on board sound (which I'll leave off cause i have a soundcard) but what's the rest for and why do I need them?

3) Which ones do i need the most recent versions of and how do I get them for the p4p800 deluxe? does anyone know direct links to all this?

phew. sorry to ask all this but i really need to understand it so my computer runs good. i really don't want another 2 years of hell like on my last pc :cry:
a is a set of drivers for the specific chipset on your mother board for it to interface with your software (same as a sound card driver, the chips are manufactured by all sorts of manufacturers and you have to have drivers to make em run proper).

b no idea ????

c raid is a system that uses 5 or 6 hard drives and by spreading the data equally over the drives uses them like one drive. when any one drive fails you just hot swap the drive and the system can tell what was on the old drive and automatically rebuilds the lost data (uses a system similar to binary in its most basic form). good system but you need to have 5 or 6 drives of the same spec and then spares for if it actually fails and needs to be replaced.

and e like you say is just to get your usb2 device running.

hope this helps some.

duncan