I just reinstalled my Windows and now I don't have all the hardware components recognized. I have an laptop and website seems to have all the necessary drivers for my model. The problem is that I don't know exactly which components I have. For example, in my laptop video card case the site has available drivers for ATI and Intel chips.
How do I know what are the right drivers for my machine?
System Information, a tool delivered with Windows, should already give you some details about the components. Run msinfo32 to run it.
If you want more details, PC Wizard 2009 is great to give you all the information about the components in your laptop. It's a free alternative to Lavalys Everest and Sisoft Sandra.
DeviceDoctor did the right job for me. It "scans your computer hardware and checks to see if there are new driver updates available for your devices. It also locates drivers for "unidentified devices" in the Windows Device Manager." Great tool(and free)!
I prefer System Information for Windows over Belarc, much nicer interface. Also has realtime information from things like your temperature sensors (if you have any).
Most of this is just through APIs from Windows, but it does a very good job of it.
Portable, non-installed application. Free for personal use, not for multiple installs in business environments (same as Belarc, although I know lots of people who ignore these kind of "please don't use this in your company" licences)
I tend to boot from a Linux distro and issue this command :
lspci
which list devices connected via PCI bus , find the drivers for controller.
Belarc shows all hardware details.
