Asus Motherboard Installation CD's

I just purchased a new Asus H871-Plus Mini-ITX motherboard. Inside the
box I received two CD's, one labeled H871-Plus Chipset Support DVD Rev
1097:02 and a second CD labeled H87 SERIES Chipset Support DVD Rev
1087:03. Should I ignore the second CD?

Should the H871 Plus CD be run AFTER I install Windows 7 or is there
something on this CD that needs to be run before installing an OS?

I also read that I should set my 240gb Corsair SSD drive's port to AHCI.
Should I also do this for my Western Digital 7200 RPM 500gb Sata drive?

On 1/1/2014 9:22 PM, Jack wrote:
I just purchased a new Asus H871-Plus Mini-ITX motherboard. Inside the
box I received two CD's, one labeled H871-Plus Chipset Support DVD Rev
1097:02 and a second CD labeled H87 SERIES Chipset Support DVD Rev
1087:03. Should I ignore the second CD?

Should the H871 Plus CD be run AFTER I install Windows 7 or is there
something on this CD that needs to be run before installing an OS?

I also read that I should set my 240gb Corsair SSD drive's port to AHCI.
Should I also do this for my Western Digital 7200 RPM 500gb Sata drive?


To install an OS, a certain amount of the hardware has
to meet standards. That allows a minimal install to be done.

Setting the SATA ports to the desired mode, before starting the
install, is recommended for least trouble. At one time, AHCI would
have been recommended to get TRIM support (allowing more free space
to be recycled inside the SSD). But apparently, other disk operating
modes can do that too now. I wouldn't think it would hurt anything,
to run both of those ports as AHCI. The OS should have an MSAHCI driver
built-in. If your optical drive has a problem with AHCI, you can
attempt to change that one. Or, run it off another chip, if an
add-on chip is provided for it.

Older OSes, like WinXP, a selection of AHCI would spell trouble. On WinXP,
you'd press F6, and offer an Intel AHCI driver for the chipset. Then finish
the rest of the install.

All the OSes have a fallback video driver. That's how you are able
to see the screen, after a minimal install. The modern OSes also
contain ATI/AMD/NVidia type drivers as well. But those aren't always
bug free. In one case, I needed to download a driver to get the
whole card to work (from NVidia). The built-in brand-specific driver
was a bit brain-dead.

You can use Device Manager (Start : Run : devmgmt.msc) to examine
hardware devices to see if *some* driver is installed. If a piece of
hardware doesn't work right, you might still need to install drivers
over top, to get full functionality.

On my current machine and current OS, I have "three marks" in Device Manager,
and two of them I don't need to resolve, because the program I'm using
with that hardware, has its own drivers. If I wanted to use that card with
WIA or with Windows Movie Maker, then I'd have to provide a standard
driver. But for the usage of the one program, it has its own drivers.
And that's not really all that "normal". Most software attempts to use
a Microsoft provided API, in which case, having standard drivers is
pretty necessary.

If you look in the System section of Device Manager, after the install
finishes, and see "a lot of marks in there", then you can reach for your
(most recent) chipset DVD and install that.

I generally only go crazy on drivers, if:

1) Marks in Device Manager. For stuff I really need.
2) Provided driver isn't working right. Throws errors etc.
Using the motherboard CD to bootstrap with, will help a lot
in that case. For an average video card, you'll need to pick
the "best" of three drivers you try. Just to give some idea
how buggy video drivers can be. I had one video card, where
the driver on the CD that came with it, crashed the computer :-)
It's because the driver sported a brand new feature, obviously
not all tested yet.
3) If you're a gamer, and try a new game every week, then you'll
want to update the video card driver fairly frequently. The newest
video cards get the most development work. My video cards are old enough,
not a line of code has been added for them in years. So there's really
no need for me to download any more "upgrades" for them. But if you have
a new video card, some are so new, the driver feature set isn't finished.
In which case, you try new drivers when they come out.

You run driver CDs *after* the OS is installed. The OS must have
enough drivers to meet the minimum. Like a SATA port driver, a
fallback video driver, a PCI.sys to wire the busses together,
and so on. Where the OS sometimes needs help, is if there is a
RAID controller and the OS doesn't have a driver. Then you need
to read up on how to add drivers, to the modern OSes. In order
to get the OS to boot, at some point the OS takes over
storage control. And it better have a driver at that point.
Slipstreaming in a driver, is one mechanism for ensuring an
obscure driver is available at T=0.

HTH,
Paul

On 01/01/2014 07:29 PM, Paul wrote:
On 1/1/2014 9:22 PM, Jack wrote:
I just purchased a new Asus H871-Plus Mini-ITX motherboard. Inside the
box I received two CD's, one labeled H871-Plus Chipset Support DVD Rev
1097:02 and a second CD labeled H87 SERIES Chipset Support DVD Rev
1087:03. Should I ignore the second CD?

Should the H871 Plus CD be run AFTER I install Windows 7 or is there
something on this CD that needs to be run before installing an OS?

I also read that I should set my 240gb Corsair SSD drive's port to AHCI.
Should I also do this for my Western Digital 7200 RPM 500gb Sata drive?


To install an OS, a certain amount of the hardware has
to meet standards. That allows a minimal install to be done.

Setting the SATA ports to the desired mode, before starting the
install, is recommended for least trouble. At one time, AHCI would
have been recommended to get TRIM support (allowing more free space
to be recycled inside the SSD). But apparently, other disk operating
modes can do that too now. I wouldn't think it would hurt anything,
to run both of those ports as AHCI. The OS should have an MSAHCI driver
built-in. If your optical drive has a problem with AHCI, you can
attempt to change that one. Or, run it off another chip, if an
add-on chip is provided for it.

Older OSes, like WinXP, a selection of AHCI would spell trouble. On WinXP,
you'd press F6, and offer an Intel AHCI driver for the chipset. Then finish
the rest of the install.

All the OSes have a fallback video driver. That's how you are able
to see the screen, after a minimal install. The modern OSes also
contain ATI/AMD/NVidia type drivers as well. But those aren't always
bug free. In one case, I needed to download a driver to get the
whole card to work (from NVidia). The built-in brand-specific driver
was a bit brain-dead.

You can use Device Manager (Start : Run : devmgmt.msc) to examine
hardware devices to see if *some* driver is installed. If a piece of
hardware doesn't work right, you might still need to install drivers
over top, to get full functionality.

On my current machine and current OS, I have "three marks" in Device
Manager,
and two of them I don't need to resolve, because the program I'm using
with that hardware, has its own drivers. If I wanted to use that card with
WIA or with Windows Movie Maker, then I'd have to provide a standard
driver. But for the usage of the one program, it has its own drivers.
And that's not really all that "normal". Most software attempts to use
a Microsoft provided API, in which case, having standard drivers is
pretty necessary.

If you look in the System section of Device Manager, after the install
finishes, and see "a lot of marks in there", then you can reach for your
(most recent) chipset DVD and install that.

I generally only go crazy on drivers, if:

1) Marks in Device Manager. For stuff I really need.
2) Provided driver isn't working right. Throws errors etc.
Using the motherboard CD to bootstrap with, will help a lot
in that case. For an average video card, you'll need to pick
the "best" of three drivers you try. Just to give some idea
how buggy video drivers can be. I had one video card, where
the driver on the CD that came with it, crashed the computer :-)
It's because the driver sported a brand new feature, obviously
not all tested yet.
3) If you're a gamer, and try a new game every week, then you'll
want to update the video card driver fairly frequently. The newest
video cards get the most development work. My video cards are old
enough,
not a line of code has been added for them in years. So there's really
no need for me to download any more "upgrades" for them. But if you have
a new video card, some are so new, the driver feature set isn't
finished.
In which case, you try new drivers when they come out.

You run driver CDs *after* the OS is installed. The OS must have
enough drivers to meet the minimum. Like a SATA port driver, a
fallback video driver, a PCI.sys to wire the busses together,
and so on. Where the OS sometimes needs help, is if there is a
RAID controller and the OS doesn't have a driver. Then you need
to read up on how to add drivers, to the modern OSes. In order
to get the OS to boot, at some point the OS takes over
storage control. And it better have a driver at that point.
Slipstreaming in a driver, is one mechanism for ensuring an
obscure driver is available at T=0.

HTH,
Paul

As usual thanks so much for the clear explanation Paul.