OLD MB - Can I use XP or Vista MB Drivers in Windows 7?

jdfensty

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Jun 8, 2013
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(Hi all - longtime reader, first time poster... :) )

The "tl;dr" precis of this post: I have an ancient MB I'd like to try Win 7 on, but the last chipset/MB drivers for it are for Vista or XP. Would those work? Or might Win7 have built-in chipset drivers for it?

...

So, I admit from the get-go this is a fool's errand and waste of time, but that's what we tweakers like to do with our weekends anyway, right?

I have a really old AMD Sempron motherboard - MSI K8MM-V to be exact. Sempron CPU @ 1.6ghz and 2 GB RAM.

It's worked for about 7 years now, quietly chugging away running Win XP as a simple "home server" - runs a cheesy web page for my domain, serves as a print server, media shares all my music and video to the rest of the house's PCs and so on.

It's got a little flaky lately, but I think just needs an OS reinstall (first thing to try anyway) and for kicks I thought I'd see how it would like Win 7 x86, which I happen to have a spare license for anyway. It meets Microsoft's recommended minimum specs so at least theoretically, it could work. Win 7's media sharing center (whatever they call it) is actually very compatible with my new TV and also a Blu-Ray player I have, so it would be nice to get it running.

But, of course, MSI has no drivers for this board since Vista.

So, all of this pretext was leading up to a simple question:

Is it possible to use Win XP or Win Vista chipset/motherboard drivers under Windows 7?

Or, come to think of it, might Windows 7 already have compatible drivers in it?

MB uses the VIA K8M800-CE and VT8237R chipsets if that helps?

(MB support page: http://us.msi.com/product/mb/K8MM-V.html )

I know I can just "try it and see" with no real loss since if it fails miserably I was planning to reinstall the OS anyway, and will just go back to good 'ol dependable XP, but though I'd take a shot and see what people thought anyway.

Thanks!

JD