Elitebook 840 G3 clean install of Windows 8.1 - how to install drivers?

[lippy-lappy]

I acquired my work laptop from a former employer on the condition that the drive was completely wiped (no recovery partion or anything) and so I need to do a completely clean install.

I have installed Windows 8.1 successfully from an external USB DVD. The system boots but many device drivers are missing, including both wireless and wired networking.

From the HP web site I downloaded device drivers for this machine/OS combination. These downloaded files are .exe files. I put them on a USB stick so that I could transfer them to the laptop. I thought I would install them as follows:

In windows device manager, identify network device, right-click, select "install driver", point windows at the directory containing the downloaded .exe files.

This does not work. Windows does not recognise the .exe files as drivers.

Q1: Am I supposed to execute each of these .exe files (ie, will that install the drivers, and will windows then figure out that they are present?

Q2: Which of the 2.3GBytes of drivers do I need to install? If I install the network drivers will Windows be able to "look on the internet" and find all the other missing drivers?

Q3: Is there some way of getting an OEM install disk that makes this whole process less painful?

thanks in advance for any help and advice.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, you have to double click to run the exe files.  They will automatically install the drivers.

Yes, there is a method to automatically install the drivers...the HP Softpaq Download Manager Software.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/clientmanagement/drivers-bios.html#softpaq-download-mng

[lippy-lappy]

thank you for your helpful and super-quick response. I will try this tomorrow and report back.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.