Do all devices listed in the Device Manager normally have drivers?

Background
I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on a Sony Viao PC with an Intel Pentium 4 (3.20 Ghz) chip and and ATI Radeon x600T display card .

This evening after having switched users via the log off screen, the screen remained blank rather than returning to the screen that lists the users. After waiting for several minutes and not being able to restore the screen by turning it on and off, or access the Task Manager, I manually turned off the PC. Upon rebooting, I receiving a Stop Error message "STOP 0X000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER" which according to Microsoft Support article ID 293078 may be caused by the display driver being caught in an infinite loop. My display is working fine at present. I also checked it in the Device Manager and received the message, "This device is working properly. "

As a result of the above, I checked all devices in the Device Manager and for all but a few received the same "This device is working properly" message. However for some items listed under System Devices I received the message, "No driver installed ". Among the listed devices reporting "no driver installed" were: the Direct Memory access controller; Intel (R) 82801FBM SMBus Controller - 266 A; Intel (r) Firmware Hub Device and Programmable interrupt controller among others.

Question:
Is it normal for some devices listed in the Device Manager (accessed via the Control Panel |System| System Properties|Hardware | Device Manager) not to have drivers?

 

Hi Chet,
It looks like at least some of the chipset drivers are not installed.
Suggest you go to the Sony website, look up your model number and find what driver downloads are available. Amongst them you should find an "Intel chipset installer ", this is the main one to get, although you should also get any other main drivers (some may be original drivers that are on the drivers disk that came with the computer, some updated versions). It would be good to save copies to another drive or burn them to CD for if you need to format and reinstall Windows. You should install all the main drivers as soon as you get to a working desktop.

The chipset drivers should be installed before the graphics drivers. The graphics drivers depend on the chipset components. You should reinstall the graphics drivers again after the chipset drivers are installed completely.

Windows will say that the drivers are working OK. This does not mean they are working correctly with other drivers/hardware. When Windows runs for the first time it loads standard drivers to get the system working "basically ". You need to install the manufacturer's drivers to run the hardware the way it should be.

Say your version of Windows was created in 2003. It will not have complete drivers for your 2005 hardware (unless the manufacturer is running old drivers). When you install new hardware, Windows will ask for the location of the drivers. If you do not have the disk/files it will install the closest set it has available, so this may mean the hardware is not functioning the way the manufacturer intended.

When you have gotten all the drivers, run the programs or decompress them (I make a folder C:/Drivers), then, even after installing those. Go through what seems to be the major hardware components in Device Manager and click on "Reinstall" or "Update ", just to check that Windows has not missed any (it will install some drivers then find that other components start functioning correctly). This is why it is best to install all the manufacturer's drivers immediately after installing Windows.

Let us know if you need help locating drivers or if you still find "the drivers are not installed" message (in this case you can try uninstalling the hardware and see if Windows can locate and install the drivers on reboot) or you still seem to have problems with the graphics.

Matt

 

Hi Matt,

Thanks, this is helpul. I will follow your advise (I have already downloaded the drivers and placed them on a CD as well) but before I do so I have a couple more questions.

1. Before re-installing the chipset driver should I try using the XP system restore function first? Will this correct the driver problem?

2. When I was considering a "system restore" as an option (before writing the post you have responded to) I received an alert message that Drive D (it is a second 250 GB hard disk for storing video and audio files) was disabled from the system restore process. I verified that it is in fact disabled from the process. Is this normal practice? Why?

 

Thanks, Pete. I have reloaded the Intel Chip set Drivers and the ATI display driver. All is well. Thanks also for the info on why one limits the System Restore function to only the disc with the operating system on it. Logical and very helpful.
(I don't remember how to close out a thread but this one can be as far as I am concerned.)