Why is there "Load Driver" during Windows installation?
When installing windows, there's a link to "Load Driver" as shown:
From what I know, drivers can always be installed after the OS is installed, so it seems odd that there's a "Load Driver" link during Windows installation.
What kind of "drivers" are they talking about? Is there any difference installing these drivers after Windows is installed?
This is what I see when I click on the "Load Driver" link:
**these images are found on the web (thus the unmatching backgrounds) since I can't screenshot on my PC while installing
52 Answers
Lets say you have a raid controller with disks you want to be accessible during installation. "Load driver" can be used to load the controller driver before installation.
Edit: Some might also say that it's a leftover from Windows 2000 / XP and before :)
7At this point in the installation process, you're referring to any driver that would be required to access a storage device (used as the installation target) that isn't currently accessible.
Usually, these would be SATA/SAS/IDE/SCSI controllers. But it could also be some fancy PCIe storage device that Windows Setup simply can't access.
Drivers for non-storage devices are usually completely irrelevant at this point. Although loading certain network adapter drivers could be required in some cases (although I have never seen that personally).
This is the screen you will see if Windows Setup was unable to detect any storage devices:
Loading any other drivers won't make any difference in comparison to installing them later on. In fact, I wouldn't even consider this to be a proper installation of those drivers. This part is probably just taking care of the bare minimum to get the device working right now during the setup and the next boot.
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