Windows 8.1 can't install AMD chipset drivers?

I've done a new install of Windows 8.1 on a system that had been running Windows XP x64, I swapped out the hard drive for a brand new one and installed from scratch. This system uses an Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus motherboard which uses an AMD 760G (780L)/SB710 chipset. Since the drivers available on the Asus website are woefully old, I did some looking around and found this page: Chipset
which should contain the correct drivers for all the AMD hardware on this motherboard like the SATA controllers and all the hardware that you find in Device Manager / System Devices but after installing them and rebooting I see that the SATA controller and all the system devices that should have AMD drivers install are still using generic Microsoft drivers, some of which date back to 2006.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about this?

64-bit XP was very rarely ever used. Are you sure it was the 64-bit version of XP?

Did you run the Windows 8.1 Upgrade Assistant before attempting to upgrade to W8.1 to ensure your hardware was compatible with W8.1?

You say the drivers on the site are old. I am seeing dates from 2014 for your motherboard. I don't find that old at all. Windows 8.1 was released to the public in late 2013. But more importantly, because notebooks tend to be very proprietary, it typically is best to use the drivers from the notebook maker and not the OEMs.

Yes, 100% certain (since I'm the one who built it and installed the OS in the first place) it was Windows XP x64 since I have the old hard drive I can just reconnect it and boot it up, here's a picture:


Like I said this was not an upgrade but I swapped in a brand new hard drive and did a clean install so no I didn't run the upgrade assistant because I'm not upgrading and this system meets the minimum hardware requirements. This is what Microsoft lists as Windows 8.1 minimum requirements:
Yes, the drivers are old since if you select Windows 8.1 64bit the Asus website doesn't even show you chipset drivers and you have to select Window 7 x64 and all you see is drivers for Windows 7 from 2010 (6 years old is old in computer / technology years). I'm looking at the same URL you list and I don't see any chipset drivers from 2014.

You say "But more importantly, because notebooks tend to be very proprietary, it typically is best to use the drivers from the notebook maker and not the OEMs." but this is not a notebook and I never said it was. The M5A78L-M LX Plus is a standard Micro ATX form factor motherboard so notebooks and notebook manufacturers have nothing to do with this.

The M5A78L-M LX motherboard uses an AMD chipset and there should be no problem installing the latest available AMD chipset driver package. But as I said the driver package installs (no errors or problems during the install) however none of the hardware after reboot shows that the OS is using AMD drivers and is still using generic Microsoft drivers for all the the hardware.

Like I said this was not an upgrade but I swapped in a brand new hard drive and did a clean install so no I didn't run the upgrade assistant because I'm not upgrading and this system meets the minimum hardware requirements.

Click to expand...

The Upgrade Assistant still reports if your hardware is compatible with W8.1. While you did not upgrade Windows, you did upgrade your computer. And regardless if an upgrade or fresh install, the hardware must be able to support the new OS.

??? Sorry - don't know where I got notebook! Since ASUS only has released chipset drivers for W7, that suggests to me either the hardware does not support W8.x, or you are expected to use the W7 drivers.

And just because they are 6 years old and in terms of advancements, that is a long time, that does not mean newer drivers should be out there. As much as we would like hardware makers to keep current drivers for all their (and our) legacy hardware, they won't. It cost money to maintain that development and with no return on that investment, they have no incentive to do it. You may see if you can upgrade to W7, then skip 8 and go to W10.

Pardon me for butting in here,
as Itaregid mentioned, there are no new drivers for old hardware.
the thing I always do is: install the operating system and then check in device Manager for any yellow exclamation points.
if there are none, you good to go.
Just my 2 cents
Sven

Itaregid:

While Asus makes the motherboard, AMD makes the chipsets that Asus uses on their AMD compatible motherboards (a fact I'm sure you're aware of). Asus is rather famous for at most updating their drivers pages for a year or two hence why there are no Windows 8 chipset drivers. But AMD on the other hand doesn't care about any motherboard in particular but continues to update their drivers packages for years beyond what Asus supports but the driver packages include drives for a number of chipsets (including the chipset for this Asus motherboard) and even though the driver packages was last updated say 2015 the drivers for the chipset in this particular motherboard may be from 2012-2014 as they themselves haven't been updated since that time but the latest driver packages do include drivers for the chipset that are compatible with the listed operating systems and in this case that should include Windows 8.1.

The installer extracted the drivers to C:\AMD and at least in the case of the SATA / IDE controller I was able to locate a reasonably recent driver by searching for an inf file that contained the hardware ID's for the IDE / SATA controller and pointing the update driver / disk to that directory and Windows installed the driver. So now instead of generic Microsoft drivers, I have newer AMD drivers running the SATA/IDE controller and I can see a noticeable speed improvement.

I also agree with Sven1458 and Itaregid. No vendor continues to support old hardware forever with new drivers. When you say

But as I said the driver package installs (no errors or problems during the install) however none of the hardware after reboot shows that the OS is using AMD drivers and is still using generic Microsoft drivers for all the the hardware.

Click to expand...

You must be referring to running the EXE file you d/l from AMD? The word "driver" is ambiguous. It's used to refer to both the "driver package" as well as the "device installation app".

The driver package implements the h/w interface (and is usually what we think of when we hear the word "driver"). The EXE file you download from the vendor is the "device installation app" . It always includes the driver package but sometimes also application level software (such as Catalyst Control Center). Some device installapps check the h/w to see if it's a match for the driver package (and you get a "no supported hardware found" error window from the app).

But some apps, includes yours, isn't doing an application level check if the driver package actually matches any h/w. It's simply writing the driver package files to disk where Windows can find them. Windows doesn't install them because they're not a suitable match for your graphics card so you continue to see the generic MS graphics driver