- What Does the Utility Find?
- Even the Intel Driver Scans Fail Sometimes
- Final Step: Check Your Work!
Even the Intel Driver Scans Fail Sometimes
Interestingly, when I tried to install the driver suggested by the Intel Driver Update Utility in Figure 4, I got an error message saying that the driver couldn't be installed. The Intel Pro/1000 MT Network Connection device that the Intel driver scanner flagged as being out of date is sold primarily into the OEM market. It resides in an industrial mini-ITX motherboard built by MSI, around which I built my wife's current desktop machine.
Further research revealed that drivers for OEM network adapters are supposed to come from the vendor of the motherboard or network interface card, not from Intel, so this precaution follows when the installer checks to see whether the motherboard is manufactured by Intel. Because this board wasn't an Intel product, the installation failed, as it probably should have. You may occasionally get similar results when you attempt to install Intel drivers from download links in the Intel Driver Update Utility. It's rare, but it does happen.
My response to this issue was to check the driver downloads manually for the Intel Pro/1000 MT desktop device, using Intel's support pages. That's where I learned that this board is an OEM part. The only drivers that Intel supplies for these devices come in the box in which the motherboard ships. These drivers had long since been updated, so I next checked at the MSI web page for the Fuzzy 945GME3 model I purchased. The only downloads available there were for the BIOS and the motherboard manual. No dice.
Undaunted, I entered this search string into Google: "Intel Pro/1000 MT Network Connection Windows 7 driver." This search led me to an Intel download center page entitled "Network Adapter Driver for Windows 7," which included a driver dated August 8, 2011. Pay dirt! This is probably what the Intel Driver Update Utility wanted me to download anyway, so I installed it.