Copyright: SmartInstall 2.10
Citation: SmartInstall User Manual


Getting the newest drivers
SmartInstall Introduction

The SmartInstall program is designated to help the end-users to install the most up-to-date video driver onto their systems from our driver CD. This driver installation step is strictly necessary in order to get advantage of the great 3D and 2D features of our new video cards.

SmartInstall is very easy to use, although provides a powerful and useful feature of automating the video driver installation. The user doesn’t need to know how to use the Windows display settings applet to install the video drivers, nor to know details about his video card manufacturer or about the chipset present on his card. The user even doesn’t need to know where the right driver files are located on the driver CD. All these details, necessary to install the display driver, are automatically detected and determined by this utility program.

Steps of display driver installation

Additional features


 Steps of driver installation

In order to install the corresponding display driver, the SmartInstall program has to execute the following 5 steps:

1.  detecting the video subsystem

2.  determining the location of the driver to install

3.  determining the install section in the driver’s INF file

4.  installing the driver

5.  restarting the system


Video subsystem detection

This is the first step in the driver installation process. The SmartInstall program needs to detect the following 3 main system parameters:

1.  the type of the currently running operating system

2.  the type of the VGA card present in the system (i.e. the VGA chipset manufacturer)

3.  the VGA chipset type


Determining the driver files' location
Determining the driver files’ location

The drivers are located on the driver CD in a logically organized directory structure. However, because of the large number of drivers supplied, the user may face difficulties in reaching to the right one. To overcome this inconvenience, the SmartInstall program finds the right driver for the system it is running on.

After it has found the driver on the CD, prompts the user either to accept the found location or to indicate another directory. This second possibility is very useful when installing a display driver from a location different from the driver CD (e.g. hard disc or floppy). If SmartInstall still could not find the driver’s location (e.g. there is no CD title in the CD drive), it will prompt the user to specify it explicitly.

Having the user accepted or indicated a driver location, a dialog appears in which there are displayed the information necessary to begin the driver installation:

•	the operating system

•	the VGA card type

•	the VGA chipset

•	the new driver’s location


Determining the install section

In an INF file there might be present several install sections, when the same INF is used for a set of related display drivers. In such a case, it is necessary to specify the right INF section to the driver installer program, so that the installer can install the right driver files.

SmartInstall will do this for you, so that the user doesn’t need to know or to guess which is the install section he needs or which driver does he need to install from the driver list offered. In this way, potential errors can be prevented.

 SmartInstall will display a dialog, in which the user can see the automatically determined install section. If there are still more then one sections, the user will be able to chose manually the section desired, but from a significantly reduced list.

After confirming or choosing the install section, the real driver installation process begins.


Installing the driver

The driver installation process consists of several steps, depending on the structure of the current install section of the INF file. In most of the cases, it consists of a file copying step, a system registry update step and a service configuration step. These steps are transparent for the user.


System restart after driver installation

After the driver installation process has been accomplished, the system has to be restarted so that the changes can take effect. The SmartInstall program displays a dialog box in which the user has the possibility of choosing the system reboot.

It is always recommended to exit all other applications before running SmartInstall. It is also strongly recommended to restart the system after installing a new display driver.


Additional features

Beside its major feature of installing the display driver, the SmartInstall program offers some other nice and convenient functions, like

•	video subsystem detection

•	bundled game installation

•	changing display settings

•	connecting to our web site, where you can always find a huge variety of the newest video drivers and much more

•	changing the language of SmartInstall’s user interface


 Getting system information

This function displays some useful information about your video subsystem. In order to determine which display driver is suitable for your system, SmartInstall detects the currently running operating system, the video card type (that is the video chip manufacturer) and the video chipset. Having this information provided, SmartInstall automatically locates the directory on the driver CD where the display driver is located.

Beside the above mentioned 3 key elements, the “System information” function displays the name of the currently installed and running video driver, too.


 Installing bundled games

On the driver CD there are also present one or more freely distributed games. The purpose of these games, beside entertainment, is to let users test the great features and high performance of their VGA card.

 On the current driver CD users can find the game called “Havoc”, which can be installed under Windows 95 operating systems if the user has a video card provided with S3 chipset. In the following editions of the driver CD, more bundled games are likely to come.

The installation of the bundled game is extremely simple: just click the button labeled “Game installation” and follow the displayed instructions.


 Changing display settings

After installing the right driver for the present video card, SmartInstall will set a default display resolution of 800X600 pixels, 8 bit/color. The user has got the possibility to adjust the display settings from within the SmartInstall program, in order to take advantage of higher screen resolutions, more colors or higher display frequency. This adjustment can be best done using the Settings function of the Windows’ Display applet, present in the Control Panel group.

For commodity, SmartInstall provides a shortcut to the display settings utility, where changes can be made easily. In future versions, we will provide our own, customized Display Settings program.


 Getting the newest drivers

Sparkle Technology Co., Ltd. has a web site at http://www.sparkle.com.tw, where you can connect automatically, provided you have got an Internet connection. Just click on the button labeled “Visit our website” or click the hot link at the bottom of the dialog box. SmartInstall will start your the Internet Explorer or the Netscape Navigator web browser and connects directly to Sparkle’s web site. There, from the “Download” page you can download for free our newest display drivers in a compacted, self-extracting form. They are available for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0.

After being downloaded, these drivers can be decompressed and installed with SmartInstall.