[SOLVED] Drivers for new OS install

[Kultivater]

I'm something of a computer tech myself, and I'm not used to being stumped, but I am. I have two hard drives, both with Windows 7 Professional(SP1) installed. One of them is a small OS-only drive (55GB after OS), and the other is a normal 2TB drive. When I bought this computer(nearly a year ago), the previous owners booted from the small drive due to problems with the normal one. I fixed the problems with the normal one early on, but I continued just booting from the small one and using the normal one for storage/as an install/download path. Well, my computer has been blue screening a lot lately, for seemingly unknown reasons. It also glitches out with the graphics from time to time, which also causes a crash sometimes, and when booted back up, sometimes has a completely glitched out display, which can only be fixed with a manual shut down(hold the power button). Obviously you're not supposed to do that, as it can cause serious problems(corrupted files, etc). Well, I'm pretty sure that's what ended up happening. I couldn't get the small drive to boot up without an immediate blue screen on load, or glitched out display every single time it booted. So, I decided to start booting from the normal drive. The problem is this is a gaming computer, so obviously I use it for gaming. The normal drive apparently never had the NVIDIA driver installed, so none of my games can run. So, I downloaded and attempted to install the latest one. Every time, it either failed, or Windows wouldn't boot upon restart, forcing me to use a restore point at startup repair.

So, I decided to download a Windows 7 ISO and reinstall Windows on the small drive. Now here comes the full set of problems I'm now facing that have me stumped: No driver at all beyond a basic display and audio driver seem to be installed. Windows is supposed to come with a basic set of drivers, so that threw me for a loop. My NIC, my USBs, everything didn't work. My keyboard and mouse did, at firs, oddly enough since they're USB controlled. However, when I went to boot back up from my normal drive to find drivers, once I found them and rebooted back to the small drive, my keyboard and mouse stopped working. I can't even sign into Windows now on that drive due to having no keyboard or mouse control. As far as I know, installing drivers to a secondary drive you're not booted from is impossible, and if it isn't, then I have no idea how to do it.

My question is: Is it possible to install drivers to a secondary drive's OS without actually being booted from that drive? If not, then how the hell am I going to salvage this without throwing this computer in the trash/spending hundreds of dollars?

 

[rgd1101]

and full system spec?

 

[USAFRet]

Completely unsure of what you're trying to do here.

In one or two sentences....what?

 

[Nemesia]

Hard to help you. It's confusing. The only thing I want to say at the moment is trash Windows 7 and use Windows 10 if you can and you have the system for it.

 

[Kultivater]

Completely unsure of what you're trying to do here.

In one or two sentences....what?

No drivers installed. Nothing works. Need drivers. How install drivers from different boot drive?

Is that better? I'm sorry if I sound condescending but I'm incredibly aggravated right now and I really don't see how my post is incomprehensible. Seems simple enough to understand to me.

 

[Kultivater]

Hard to help you. It's confusing. The only thing I want to say at the moment is trash Windows 7 and use Windows 10 if you can and you have the system for it.

I used to own a copy of Windows 10 on an old computer. Unfortunately, that computer was left behind a long time ago and I don't have the product key, so no dice on that unless I want to spend the ridiculous amount of money Microsoft charges to buy a new OS. All I need to do is get drivers installed onto the OS on that drive without actually being able to use it to boot from. What exactly are you not understanding?

 

[Kultivater]

and full system spec?

MSI Gigabyte chipset
Intel i5 3.2GHz(quad core)
NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti
Killer e2200 PCI-E Gigabit NIC
Realtek HD Audio
8GB RAM

 

[USAFRet]

No drivers installed. Nothing works. Need drivers. How install drivers from different boot drive?

Is that better? I'm sorry if I sound condescending but I'm incredibly aggravated right now and I really don't see how my post is incomprehensible. Seems simple enough to understand to me.

You can't "install drivers from a different boot drive"

Each "driver install" is its own thing, and needs to be instantiated and installed within the currently running OS.

From the manufacturers website, find the relevant drivers for your hardware.
Install.

 

[Kultivater]

You can't "install drivers from a different boot drive"

Each "driver install" is its own thing, and needs to be instantiated and installed within the currently running OS.

From the manufacturers website, find the relevant drivers for your hardware.
Install.

I'm unable to do anything from that drive because I can't even get my mouse and keyboard to work with it, meaning I'm stuck at the sign in screen to Windows. So, that's obviously not an option. The first time I booted that drive after the OS reinstall, my mouse and keyboard worked, but nothing else did. Not my NIC, not my USBs, nothing but the display and the audio. The reason I switched back to the bigger drive was so I could download the drivers I need and just grab them from the smaller drive and install them that way, but when I went to get back on the smaller drive, my mouse and keyboard weren't working, so I can't even sign in. I must have rebooted 10 times trying to see if they would end up working, and they didn't. I am stuck. If I can't install drivers to a secondary hard drive without using it to boot from, then I'm screwed.

 

[Kultivater]

Nevermind guys, I figured it out myself. I reset my peripherals in the BIOS, got my keyboard and mouse working, got on the smaller drive and browsed windows.old until I found a generic NIC driver that worked, got my internet connection working, downloaded the rest of the drivers and installed them, and then attempted to install the GPU driver and it failed. Being that this is a clean install, it failing on this drive as well as the other one indicated that it was a hardware problem, so I opened up my computer, disconnected my GPU from the PCI Express port, and transferred it to another port, and it worked. My computer is back to normal. Looks like I need to start thinking about getting another chipset since I only have 2 working PCI Express ports now. Anyway, thanks for attempting to help.