Ok, I feel silly for asking this, but am going to ask anyway. I "inherited" an old Dell Dimension L566cx desktop that works fine. My son wants to install Linux on the old machine to see how it does. The computer has only a 7-8 GB hard drive, so not much there for a dual booting system. I would like to be able to install a fresh copy of Win 98 SE when he is done. Now here's my problem: I have a Win 98 SE OS CD (one that I had before I got the computer), but don't have a CD to restore all of the device drivers. Is there a way that I can research manually for the device drivers on the machine and locate their corresponding inf files? I see the "inf" folder, but don't see a "driver" folder. I wanted to find out if I can do this on my own without shelling out more $$$ on programs.

Might be able to find them at Dell or maybe try WinDriversBackup. http://www.soft32.com/download_8412.html Best

Thanks for the input jubalsams. I've tried looking up information on Dell by just using the service tag number - didn't find anything to help me. I'll check out soft32's site. I have never had to deal with an older computer that didn't come with the OS and driver/app CDs, so this is new to me. I am thinking that I might have to get a piece of paper and pencil, go into the device manager, open up each device and start writing down all the information I see for device information and drivers. I don't know how else to approach this. I was kinda hoping that if I just copied specific folders to a CD, then when I install a fresh OS, I'd be able to point to the CD I made and Win would look for the drivers on that CD. But, even in that "easy" approach, it would still be good to know what I got on the system. More input would be fine. In the meanwhile, I will get my paper, write down what I see and research online to see if I have drivers available online.

Collecting your Drivers Double click on the My Computer Icon, Double click on the (C:) drive Icon, Double click on the WINDOWS folder. Now burn the Windows INF folder, the SYSTEM folder, & Double click on the SYSTEM32 folder and burn the DRIVERS folder to a CD-RW. Then when you reinstall and need the drivers direct it to these three folders.

Thanks JPW for the input. Hehe, I was backing up some existing folders on a flash drive and backed up those three specifically in the event that I could use them. I'll burn a copy of those folders onto a CD and go from there. Thanks again.

You might download Everest Home. It will tell you more about the computer than you want to know!!! It will tell you the exact name of each piece of hardware so that you can go to find drivers. Good Luck Smitty

Also i nice simple way of finding out what hardware is by going into device manager. Simply right click My Computer>properties>Device Manager and then click the expand tabs to see the names of sound cards, gfx cards etc.