TR Forums

Hi!

I have an Asus P5KC motherboard, and I am preparing to upgrade to Vista 64. I don't "think" all of the available BIOS, driver, and utility updates are really required, but I downloaded them all anyhow.

I have been to the Asus support site, and found drivers for the following areas. My notes are next to each item.

BIOS and BIOS Utility - 1001 is now available. Description says "support new CPUs". I use an Intel Q6600 and don't plan to upgrade that at this time.
Assessment: not needed.

Chipset - There are two out there for Vista 64. Both are versioned "V8.3.0.1013", but one has a date 2007/09/20, and the other shows 2007/05/07. I downloaded both, and will review their website to see which one (if any) should be used. If in doubt, I will use the later one.
Assessment: will probably use the newest one.

ATK - I know what the description says, but I have no inkling what this is. It says "ACPI Driver for ATK 0110 Virtual Device for Windows XP (32 and 64)/Vista (32 and 64). There's only one version out there, labeled "1043.4.0.0".
Assessment: not sure if this is needed, or even "when" I would apply it...during Vista 64 install? After first boot?

AUDIO and RAID Drivers:
Assessment: I use an external audio and MIDI processor, so I don't need Audio drivers. I don't use Raid; won't need that, either.

LAN: My board has an Attansic LAN controller, so I downloaded the Vista 64 driver, labeled "2.0.6000.0"
Assessment: I will probably need this. Will install after Windows/Vista 64 is up and running.

UTILITIES: This one is very confusing. There were a number of items here, all with different filenames.
Asus Update v7.13.04 (2007/12/17) Install Program for Windows XP(32 and 64) ---> yes, it says "for XP", but is in the "Vista 64 bit" section. A typo, perhaps?
Assessment: Not sure the status of this; don't know if I should install it after Vista is up and running?

Asus PC ProbeII V1.04.19 Install Program for Windows XP/Vista & Windows 64 bit XP/Vista.
Assessment: I think this is the CPU overclocking utility and/or temperature monitor. I don't think I need to install this.

Asus AI Suite V1.03.19 for Windows XP & 64 bit XP and 32/64 bit Vista.
Assessment: I don't know what this is, and I don't know whether I will really need it under Vista 64.

Does anybody have any ideas on any of the above?

How about general philosophy regarding motherboard BIOS, chipset driver, or monitor updates? I generally don't apply them unless I'm installing a new OS such as this migration from XP 32 to Vista 64...but I would be interested in what other people think about this.

One note about the RAID drivers: often these include more than just RAID functionality, and are necessary to have access to any extended features such as NCQ, hot plug for eSATA, etc. If your HD is a SATA drive and you expect to make use of any of those features, you should have the controller set to AHCI (not "legacy" or "compatible" or "IDE") in the SATA / storage configuration screen of the BIOS before you install. Vista should have base SATA drivers in the default install, but I believe your motherboard has an additional JMicron storage controller and off-hand I don't know if Vista has a driver for that in its base install (of course, that doesn't matter if you aren't planning on using it).

Uber G, you rock!

I do use only SATA drives (except for a mostly-offline library drive full of legacy sound samples which is connected via USB...but probably only powered up once every six months or so). Getting the drivers as I write this.

Thanks. I'm just about done gathering my drivers. I just finished updating my firmware for my DVD/RW drive and my old NetGear router. So far, so good. I still seem to be online.

I'm about to start reviewing my device manager items to make sure I didn't forget anything.

Man, those colours are killing me with the blue background. Try not to use them next time?

If I did not comment that means I think you are in the clear.

BIF wrote:

ATK - I know what the description says, but I have no inkling what this is. It says "ACPI Driver for ATK 0110 Virtual Device for Windows XP (32 and 64)/Vista (32 and 64). There's only one version out there, labeled "1043.4.0.0".
Assessment: not sure if this is needed, or even "when" I would apply it...during Vista 64 install? After first boot?

This is mainly used for the PCProbe and other utilities to read the temp/voltage/etc. information and to do the actual overclocking via software. You can leave the device alone with no drivers. At least that is what the ATK drivers on my AMD X2 system do.

BIF wrote:

AUDIO and RAID Drivers:
Assessment: I use an external audio and MIDI processor, so I don't need Audio drivers. I don't use Raid; won't need that, either.

You will need audio drivers for your external audio and MIDI processors. So if they are not available this may be a deal breaker.

BIF wrote:

Asus Update v7.13.04 (2007/12/17) Install Program for Windows XP(32 and 64) ---> yes, it says "for XP", but is in the "Vista 64 bit" section. A typo, perhaps?
Assessment: Not sure the status of this; don't know if I should install it after Vista is up and running?

I don't do BIOS updated in Windows, so if you are in the same boat then you don't need it.

BIF wrote:

Asus PC ProbeII V1.04.19 Install Program for Windows XP/Vista & Windows 64 bit XP/Vista.
Assessment: I think this is the CPU overclocking utility and/or temperature monitor. I don't think I need to install this.

AFAIK PC Probe II is strictly a monitoring too. If you don't need to install then you don't need it of course.

BIF wrote:

Asus AI Suite V1.03.19 for Windows XP & 64 bit XP and 32/64 bit Vista.
Assessment: I don't know what this is, and I don't know whether I will really need it under Vista 64.

Also what I consider to be frills. Not needed IMO.

I'm sure that board of yours have the memory remap feature, be sure to turn it on to get your >3.2GiB of RAM.

My view of the board has a background in light tan, not blue. Do we have different color settings?

I'm reading your post; will respond in a few minutes.

Okay, only one thing...

I should have clarified that I use an external audio device, which came with 64 bit drivers on the installation DVD. Additionally, it looks like the hardware vendor has posted some more current VISTA 64 drivers.

I'll look for the color options. But I like the brown/tan; the forum is easy to read in those colors.

The profile I use is "TR-PROSILV".

Not TR-PROSILV-BLUE. I don't remember changing it, but I like how it looks.

So what is it, just the blue that is hard to read?

I would not use any colour at all. Bold or italics is fine. If you really want differentiation you can always use a quote block.

The red and green will sure mess up about 7-10% of the people, as pointed out with the discussion of the blue theme.

Let's get back on topic soon, or I will have to mod myself out.

New BIOS update? Sure! I love 'em!

I can't think of a convincing reason not to use the latest BIOS and latest drivers available for my PC.

Careful with ASUS Update. It's a windows BIOS flashing util, adn it bricked a mobo in Vista 64 a while back, evne though it was supposedly Vista 64 compatible.

The ATK driver will update itself along with Windows updates, so no reason to mess with it manually.

don't worry about the people using the blue color scheme, tha'ts what they get for going non-standard.

ASUS update? Nah! I use an old-school MSDOS or DRDOS boot disk for my BIOS flashing.

Hi guys...

Well, I always use color in my posts. I'll try to cool it for all of you's wit da blues screens (or was that "Blue Screens"; oh shush!) ...

As for the BIOS update. The bios update tool that I have is a DOS-applied tool, I believe. But I don't plan to do a BIOS update for this Windows Vista upgrade. I downloaded the bios and the tool, but I'll leave that sleeping dog lie.

As for everything else, my drivers have all been downloaded and my drives copied. The old XP drives have been set aside for safe-keeping. I'm ready to go. See you in the Windows forum...

For me, BIOS update is recommended
because it contains some fix for CPU and also chipset.

And yeah... In DOS we trust.