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Would I Need To Reinstall Drivers If I Replace Identical Hardware?


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#1
superstar

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I've been having problems with my current 5 port usb pci card for a while now. It's worked fine for over 2 years and recently about 5 months ago some of the ports stopped working. & if anything is connected to them the pc will freeze or reboot itself. With the exception of two ports that work fine. So I decided to take a look at the card and clean it off because it had major dust on it. That didn't help solve the problem, so I setup a system restore point, uninstalled the card from my "device manager" in xp, rebooted my system, and xp reinstalled the card again automatically. That also didn't help as the ports still didn't work properly. So whatever I restored my system back to before I did that. Point is I give up so I'm going to buy a new usb pci card.

My question is...

Can I buy the exact same usb pci card and just switch it with the old one without having to reinstall the drivers [or xp doing it automatically]? I ask because there are many programs I have that would have to be reinstalled to work if the usb card drivers need to be reinstalled.


I can get the exact same card, but I'm wondering if I can switch it with my current one as if I never even did a switch at all. Please let me know if I can fool xp this way or not.




Thank you for your time.

Edited by superstar, 18 January 2009 - 03:51 AM.

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#2
123Runner

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The drivers for the card are only so that XP will recognize the card and know how to operate.
Your programs will not care what drivers.
A device needs drivers to operate. You could try the same identicle board, but chances are it will be recognised as being new and will want the updated drivers that should come on a cd with the card.
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