New Gigabyte motherboard, can't load drivers, USB sticks not recognized in windows

ashcanpete

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Mar 17, 2016
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I just bought and installed a new Gigabyte Gaming 3 with an i5-6600K. I was coming from an AMD board/CPU so I did a sysprep in my Windows 7 install to clear out drivers right before installing the board. Windows 7 booted right up without needing a fresh install (thank goodness). A couple drivers auto-installed, but not the ethernet adapter, so I can't download the drivers (I have no optical drive).

I tried downloading drivers on my laptop to 2 different USB sticks, but they aren't recognized at all by any of the USB ports on my new mobo. I should note that my mouse and keyboard are USB and they work fine. Anyway, with no ethernet driver, no optical drive and no USB sticks being recognized, does anyone know how I can now install any drivers?

Also, I now feel pretty dumb for not downloading all the drivers to my hard drive before installing the new mobo, but at this point its too late (at least not without hours of hardware reassembly and doing a restore of my backup from before the sysprep).
 
Found your problem: You bought a Gigabyte board.

Seriously though, it seems (based on my personal experience and the many posts I read here) that they've been going down hill for years.

As for getting to the drive... surely it isn't that hard to pull? Do you have an enclosure or one of those little SATA to USB adapter deals? If not, might be a good time to get one -- they're lifesavers in situations like this. Pull the drive, connect it to the laptop, move files over, put it back. Set.
 
Found your problem: You bought a Gigabyte board.

Seriously though, it seems (based on my personal experience and the many posts I read here) that they've been going down hill for years.

As for getting to the drive... surely it isn't that hard to pull? Do you have an enclosure or one of those little SATA to USB adapter deals? If not, might be a good time to get one -- they're lifesavers in situations like this. Pull the drive, connect it to the laptop, move files over, put it back. Set.

That's a good idea, unfortunately I don't have a SATA drive enclosure handy (I actually thought I did own one at one point, but now can't find it for the life of me). We might have one sitting around at work I could borrow, I'll try to find one tomorrow.

As to Gigabyte, its actually kind of funny. I've always heard so much about them, but never had a GB mobo until this one. I guess I should have got one back while the getting was still good, so to speak.
 
It won't recognize a sata optical DVD-ROM drive so you can install from the driver disk?
 
It won't recognize a sata optical DVD-ROM drive so you can install from the driver disk?

It will I imagine, I just don't own one. I had an old IDE DVD burner with the last mobo, but this new one doesn't have an IDE connector. I actually ordered a SATA optical drive on Amazon a couple hours ago, but will take a couple days. If possible I'd like to be able to use my desktop before then.
 
Is the laptop SATA? Last ditch, you could set up DOS or Linux on a bootable USB drive along with the files you need (or just connect a second USB drive with the files in addition to the bootable drive), put the desktop drive in the laptop, boot off the USB drive and copy the files over.
 
I'd just re Install windows... should be done anyways...

I am curious why you say it should be done? I find reinstalling the OS to be a major PITA unless truly necessary. It's not the actually installation of windows (or linux), but the reinstalling of every program, re-customizing all settings, etc. I think when you plan to upgrade your OS, a fresh install is probably a better idea to avoid issues, but if remaining on the same OS and only changing hardware, I see no reason to go through all that rigmarole.
 
Is the laptop SATA? Last ditch, you could set up DOS or Linux on a bootable USB drive along with the files you need (or just connect a second USB drive with the files in addition to the bootable drive), put the desktop drive in the laptop, boot off the USB drive and copy the files over.

Well unfortunately the laptop is actually a Surface Pro 3, so no way to switch drives (without warranty invalidation). But I think that a bootable USB drive might work, I suspect the BIOS might recognize a USB boot drive (if not then Gigabyte has failed me badly). I think Linux would probably be too time consuming, but am definitely considering it if I get desperate before the SATA optical drive comes (downloading Mint right now in fact). But I'm curious about a bootable DOS USB stick, that sounds much simpler and quicker. Do you know would I go about making one?
 
Just google "how to make a usb drive bootable with dos from windows" or something like that. There are tons of tutorials out there.
 
I am curious why you say it should be done? I find reinstalling the OS to be a major PITA unless truly necessary. It's not the actually installation of windows (or linux), but the reinstalling of every program, re-customizing all settings, etc. I think when you plan to upgrade your OS, a fresh install is probably a better idea to avoid issues, but if remaining on the same OS and only changing hardware, I see no reason to go through all that rigmarole.
Ironically your system would run better and you'd spend less time messing around if you just did a fresh install after switching cpu Brands and chipsets etc.

W10 took me less than 10 minutes to install. Had everything up and running in 30 minutes.

So unless you have a data limit or you lack broadband access, I can't understand or fathom not doing a fresh clean install.

It's common knowledge that is old school but stands the test of time. Do it right the first time. Doing it now will almost guarantee less headaches in the future.
 
Ironically your system would run better and you'd spend less time messing around if you just did a fresh install after switching cpu Brands and chipsets etc.

W10 took me less than 10 minutes to install. Had everything up and running in 30 minutes.

So unless you have a data limit or you lack broadband access, I can't understand or fathom not doing a fresh clean install.

It's common knowledge that is old school but stands the test of time. Do it right the first time. Doing it now will almost guarantee less headaches in the future.

For me, a reinstall would take far, far longer than 10 minutes. I have dozens of applications that I've been using for years, each has its settings tuned, perfectly how I like them. I have the windows environment itself modified with countless tweaks and regedits I've used over the past few years to fix annoyances or change features. It would take me close to 10 hours to get everything back to the way I had it before, and even then, I'm sure to have missed several things. If I can spend 4 hours to avoid that, that time is well spent.

For me a reinstall of an OS is a lot like moving apartments. Sure, sometimes it's necessary to pack it up here and unpack it all somewhere fresh and new. However, most people don't move unless it's truly necessary, to avoid uprooting a significant part of their life for no reason and then to having to put it all back together somewhere else.
 
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Remember that console only Linux is a thing and will do what you need no problem. Or a live distro.
 
For me, a reinstall would take far, far longer than 10 minutes. I have dozens of applications that I've been using for years, each has its settings tuned, perfectly how I like them. I have the windows environment itself modified with countless tweaks and regedits I've used over the past few years to fix annoyances or change features. It would take me close to 10 hours to get everything back to the way I had it before, and even then, I'm sure to have missed several things. If I can spend 4 hours to avoid that, that time is well spent.

For me a reinstall of an OS is a lot like moving apartments. Sure, sometimes it's necessary to pack it up here and unpack it all somewhere fresh and new. However, most people don't move unless it's truly necessary, to avoid uprooting a significant part of their life for no reason and then to having to put it all back together somewhere else.
Hello Ashcanpete, are you aware of latest Intel 100 series has a problem on installing Window 7 due to USB XHCI driver.
You can check any brand of Intel 100 series like Asus, MSI , Gigabyte when installaing Window 7(EHCI mode) they have a Window USB Installation tools for OS imaging into your USB disk that bundle on the image.
Why don't you try to back-up your old application on other disk then re-install your OS.
Here is the link on how to do Window USB Installation tools for your USB OS image.
 
For me, a reinstall would take far, far longer than 10 minutes. I have dozens of applications that I've been using for years, each has its settings tuned, perfectly how I like them. I have the windows environment itself modified with countless tweaks and regedits I've used over the past few years to fix annoyances or change features. It would take me close to 10 hours to get everything back to the way I had it before, and even then, I'm sure to have missed several things. If I can spend 4 hours to avoid that, that time is well spent.

For me a reinstall of an OS is a lot like moving apartments. Sure, sometimes it's necessary to pack it up here and unpack it all somewhere fresh and new. However, most people don't move unless it's truly necessary, to avoid uprooting a significant part of their life for no reason and then to having to put it all back together somewhere else.

Than either way you are going to be undertaking a time taking process. Good luck
 
ashcanpete, pchealth 2 - your ideas are right on. Let me add a couple before you reformat ashcanpete. Firstly, you're likely using a motherboard by Gigabyte with no USB 2.0 ports (or the ports that are 3.0 are the ones you're attempting to plug your USB flash drives into). Remember, Windows 7 does NOT have native USB 3.0 support. Only 2.0. You need to load a USB driver into Windows 7 to get all of your USB 3.0 ports working. So first thing to try, load the USB 3.0 driver(s) for your 3.0 ports all over your machine. Another option is to find 2.0 ports on your machine (if any) and load the flash drive into those. Then try to load to your flash drives and load your NIC driver. Try this and write back with the result. Thanks.
 
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