Drivers

I know that if you do an "upgrade" installation from vista to windows 7 you can transfer all your settings and files etc over but does that include drivers?

This is because I got a laptop that had the drivers for the mousepad and stuff already installed so if I did an upgrade and find out that the mousepad doesn't work then I'm stuffed.

Your mousepad needs drivers? In any case, did Windows automatically detect the drivers for you the first time around or did you nab them yourself?

I call it a mousepad but I guess I should really call it a touchpad.
Whether Windows automatically detected the drivers or not I'm not quite sure because I brought it at the shops and as soon as I turned it on it was already set up.

OH, laptop touchpad. Chances are Windows will automatically install a generic driver for you. However, if you want the touchpad gestures and special area functions (ie touchpad scroll), you'll need to find the manufacturer driver, which can usually be obtained by visiting your laptop's manufacturer website and finding your model and getting the driver.

So in other words I'm stuck with just moving the cursor around when I upgrade to Windows 7 until I get the drivers to fix the touchpad scroll?

Affirmative.

I see. Thanks for the help.

hmm thats odd, my laptops touchpad had the scroll working perfectly after upgrading from windows vista home premium to win7 ultimate, well thats for me lol, not sure bout what might happen to you.

well since this is a drivers discussion...
Windows 7 is a little more serial then previous windows versions.
but drivers on windows are normally a bitch if your stuff, like network card, does not have integrated drivers. especially if your running non 7 windows.

i have been nearly sol on xp systems that the networking card it had did not have drivers so no network, (no way to get the drivers)

You young kids and your sillies. Just get it somewhere else, then put it on a USB stick/CD. Back in the day, before PnP (Plug & Play) you had to use jumpers to setup IRQs, load & configure drivers by hand (which is what the config.sys file was for on DOS).

Nowadays, when your mom, your gran and even her dog has Internet it's pretty easy to just use another machine and download the necessary drivers there.

Here, some handy links:
http://www.driverguide.com/
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/
http://www.motherboard.cz/
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/

Wow flaser my friend, i feel young again

^ note that the above image was supposed to be a loli face but it got replaced with my favorite super Nintendo game character, for some reason i have no idea... maybe its because i cant go back this far in computer history because i have only used computers since i was 10 before that it was all snes baby.