Fresh Installation of Windows 7 on a New Hard Drive. Windows Can't Search Online.

[Zoleek]

After I bought my new hard drive and windows installation disk, windows doesn't have the latest drivers. When I try to click on the search automatically online, it runs for about 20 minutes and then says it can't find drivers. I know the drivers are out there myself so whats wrong with windows? I also installed Microsoft Security Essentials and it said it was outdated so I clicked search online for updates and that doesn't work either. I can go on the internet just fine so its not a problem with the wireless card. Is there a special driver that I need to manually download that will search the internet for drivers and updates?

 

[Colif]

you should go to the motherboard makers web site and download the latest drivers for your board from them. Also go to Nvidia or AMD site and get latest drivers for which ever card you have. Only then should you run a program like driver Booster that will find the drivers you missed.

 

[thx1138v2]

You have to activate your new install before updates will work.

First turn off Windows Update from Control Panel.

Before you check for updates be sure to disable Windows 10 update. Start regedit and set the following keys. If they aren't present create them.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\DisableOSUpgrade=1
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX\DisableGWX=1

Then manually download and install 2 updates. It will make the rest of the updates go much faster. If they say to reboot do so.
Win7 32-bit: Windows6.1-KB3138612-x86.msu and Windows6.1-KB947821-v34-x86.msu
Win7 64-bit: Windows6.1-KB3138612-x64.msu and Windows6.1-KB947821-v34-x64.msu

Then Start->right click Computer->Properties. At the bottom of the screen is an option to activate your new install. You'll need your key from the installation disk.

Then run Windows Update from Control Panel. You may get a message that some updates failed. Ignore it. Reboot to finish the install of the ones that succeeded. Then run Windows Update from Control Panel again rebooting between each set of successful updates and repeat until you get no failed updates message.

That may correct your driver issues as well. Check in Device Manager. If you still have issues try again searching for driver updates.

It can take several hours depending on your internet speed and processor speed. I know this works.

Microsoft has released a new "rollup" of the updates called SP2 but I haven't used that yet so you may end up with Windows 10 if you use that. Has anyone out there used Win 7 SP2 yet?