# Windows 8 Startup Menu - Load drivers



## craige1 (Feb 12, 2013)

It seems that you cant load drivers in the windows 8 startup menu/troubleshoot menu. If you have a OS drive that requires a driver to see (raid controller, some SSD's, sata controller, etc), then you cant use the windows 8 startup troubleshooting tools. There is no option in the menu to load drivers and therefor every recovery tool in the menu fails. 

While the majority of computers don't need to load drivers to see the main boot drive, a fair amount do, so this lack of ability to load drivers to see it confuses me. I feel like I must be missing something. I even looked at trying to load drivers from the command prompt, but its not available with the tools in the troubleshoot environment.

I did find a "way" to get the recovery tools to work on drives that need drivers. Grab the windows 8 disk and proceed with an install until it asks you to load drivers for drives. After you load the driver, cancel out of the install which will bring you back to the start of the windows install disk which has a "repair my computer" option. That option loads an identical troubleshoot environment, but now has access to the drive thanks to the install processes "load driver" option.

The biggest problem with that tho is, not only do you need to have the install disk, but you also need your serial key so that you can proceed to the install point that has the option to load the drivers. If you come across a machine that someone has asked you to fix, what are the chances of have both the install disk and the serial key on hand?

(this is not a rant at windows 8, I love windows 8).


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## GZ (Jan 31, 2010)

Hello craige1 and welcome to TSF,

You can load drivers into Windows 8 through the Device Manager applet, like in previous versions of Windows... It is found in the Device Manager... Just type "Device Manager" on the start screen...


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