Zotac ZBOX CA320
Since I needed a small and cheap computer to run Windows 7, I got the Zotac ZBOX CA320. It is equipped with an AMD A6-1450 quad-core processor which is clocked at 1GHz. Certainly, this is not a powerful device but it is good enough for what I use it for.
After installation of Windows 7, I installed the display drivers from the Zotac web site by running setup from the amd_vga directory which installed the Microsoft .NET framework in four different flavours (current version 32bit, current version 64bit, 2012 version 32bit, 2012 version 64bit), makes about 1.2GB. Plus it installs a useless Catalyst Center which takes ages to start and all it can tweak is to turn the power of the antenna on and off as well as minimum and maximum speed of the processor. I am underwhelmed (and this is an overstatement). In the following, I will show how to install the drivers without that bloatware.
Hence, I decided to not go through the setup programs and let Windows install the drivers from their .inf files without going through any setup files. Since I am not a real Windows expert, this may have serious downsides that I am not aware of. Anyways, so far I did not find them. If you know of any, please let me know.
Windows Driver Installation
First, let’s install the drivers that are easy to install. For each driver, go to the Device Manager, right click on the hardware for which you would like to update the driver and select “Update Driver Software…”, next select “Browse my computer for driver software” and select the appropriate directory containing the .inf file.
The High Definition Audio Device are already correctly identified by Windows 7 during its installation. The following should be available: Digital Audio (HDMI), Digital Audio (S/PDIF), Speakers. Nothing needs to be done here.
Most of the drivers are straight forward to install properly, just use the following table to select the drivers. Except for the IR driver, you probably can just specify the directory where you store the drivers and Windows 7 will find them. For the IR driver, Windows 7 will find one whose installation will eventually fail.
| Display adapters/Display Drivers | amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/Display/WB6A_INF |
| Other devices/Network Controller | ac3160/WLAN/Win7Plus/Win64/Drivers/Win7 |
| Other devices/Ethernet Controller | realtek_lan/win7/WIN7/64 |
| Other devices/Unknown device (IR) | itecir/win7_8/INFDrv/64OS |
| Other devices/USB2.0-CRW | Use the following driver directory for the card reader: card_reader/DrvBin64 |
The “Other devices/SM Bus Controller” is also straight froward. The ReadMe.rtf shipped with the driver has the following to say about this controller.
Windows thinks SMBUS as a device and require a driver for it. Therefore, we provide a null driver package, a .inf file without .sys file, to satisfy OS requirements. This driver supports Windows XP, WS03, Vista, WS08, Win7 and WS08-R2 (32-bit & 64-bit versions of each OS).
Hence, any of the following can be used (they are the same modulo the SMBUSamd.msi file which is not referenced by the drivers):
amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/SMBus_svr, amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/SMBus/W7, amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/SMBus/W764A
The “Other devices/Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller” is probably the most tricky to install. Forst, the amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/Bolton and amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/hseries directories are identical except for the .msi files which are not referenced by the .inf file.
First update the driver of the “Other devices/Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller” with the drivers from the following directory.
amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/Bolton/USB30/amdxhc/W764A
Windows will update the driver and will show us that it has successfully updated your driver software (AMD USB 3.0 Host Controller). Almost at the same time, Windows scans the Host Controller and finds another hardware device which Windows will be unable to install (Unidentified Device, no driver found). This device shows up in the Computer Management as Unknown device. Now, update the driver of this newly detected device with the drivers from following directory:
amd_vga/Packages/Drivers/SBDrv/Bolton/USB30/amdhub/W764A
Now all your hardware should be installed to your liking. Enjoy.