Had to jump in. Have the same computer and same question as ranolmz. I found this thread by googling "AX201 INT9462 INT9560." This is the only English-language hit from Google that contains all three part numbers. I regret that JackE drove the thread away from the original question. I'm trying to perform a clean install on a new 1TB SSD, hence my need for the correct drivers.

It appears that Acer sources components from different vendors which are installed in the same model. Rather than keeping a database of the vendors whose components are installed in a specific SNID, Acer has posted all the drivers for all components that might be installed. The user is left to figure out which parts are installed on his or her individual computer.

I reinstalled the factory SSD and have just completed an exhaustive review of the drivers found in device manager. I have confirmed that I have an Elantech touchpad driver, both Intel and Nvidia graphics drivers, an AX201 bluetooth driver, and Realtek audio. I cannot tell about the rest of the wireless and bluetooth drivers listed in Post #1. I have no Qualcomm Atheros components. Reports from System Information and third-party tools have not helped identify other specific drivers. This information does not help ranolmz who is starting from scratch. He might, however, consider my drivers as a possible starting point.

My strategy going forward will be to attempt to install all the drivers I cannot identify and see which ones are accepted and which are rejected, taking notes along the way. This strategy could easily result in a hot mess, in which case more clean installs will be necessary until I get it right. Brute force over elegant solutions, eh?

One "gotcha." The default BIOS setting for SATA mode is "RST with Optane." If the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver has not been installed, the SSD will not boot. The SATA mode must be changed to "AHCI." After the RST driver has been installed, the setting must be changed to "RST with Optane." Perhaps the driver takes care of this BIOS change as part of the installation. If not, it must be performed manually.

Good luck to ranolmz!

Here is a copy of the driver installation checksheet I am using to track the process. I am about to start on Bluetooth.

A final note and then I'll log off. I think JackE and I are working at cross purposes and ranolmz is caught in the middle. As I interpreted ranolmz's initial question, he was performing a clean install of Win10 and the touchpad did not work. I had the same problem. The easy answer is to plug in a USB mouse until you have installed the touchpad driver. There is apparently no generic touchpad driver bundled with Win10 that will work with the Acer touchpad on this model. Acer offers two touchpad drivers for download (Synaptics and Elantech), so the second part of ranolmz's question was how to determine which driver to use. JackE probably has an answer but declined to opine and began playing whack-a-mole with drivers.

I suppose I've been guilty of whack-a-mole, too. My motivation was to perform a clean install on a new SSD replacing the factory model. I refuse to run the factory installation because I don't know or understand the function of all the software (bloatware?) installed at the factory. I prefer to install the latest download from Microsoft followed by the necessary drivers and no more. Acer has left users in a confusing position by (1) failing to provide downloads of all factory-installed software, and (2) offering multiple drivers from different vendors for the same component. Their documentation is weak.

To illustrate, here is a list of the installed software from the factory image:

Nowhere on Acer's website will you find "DriverSetupUtility" or "Acer Configuration Manager." I have found numerous questions in this forum asking what those two "apps" do and where to download them, but no answers. I'll bet JackE knows.

I have no clue about "App Explorer" or "Care Center Service," but they do not sound like software I want on my computer. The same goes for "Quick Access Service" and "User Experience Improvement Program Service." Those could be anything, including spyware. I do not use Symantec products.

When all these items are removed from the list, all that remains are the drivers shown in my earlier post above. Interestingly, I have found that Optane runs fine when I restore the factory image to my new hard drive, but getting the Optane drivers to work on a clean install has thus far been problematic. I have plenty of speed with my new SSD. My (limited) understanding of Optane is that it is intended to improve the performance of traditional mechanical hard drives either used alone or in combination with a solid state drive. There does not seem to be much reason to use Optane when the SSD is the only drive in the system. Since that is how the Model A515-54G comes from the factory, I suspect there is some underlying licensing or promotional scheme with Intel to force Optane on users whether they need it or not.

This has been an interesting exercise. I admit to having borrowed this thread to document my own process and hope that my findings are useful to ranolmz and anyone else who stumbles across this information. I've got my system up and running the way I want (without Optane). Best wishes to all.

It's too bad I wasn't around when all of this started, my time is limited today but I've caught up with the thread and I'll be posting some thoughts on the matter (since I'm also an owner of an A515-54G.

First, for @ranolmz, addressing the initial purpose of the thread regarding the touchpad not working by default, it's because of the way it's been wired in the system. It goes over Intel's Serial I/O and seems to be controlled via I2C (it's the only controller of present of the time). Because Comet Lake systems are still new-ish Windows 10 doesn't have inbox drivers for those kinds of topologies, what needs to be done to use the trackpad during the initial portion of the Windows installation is to integrate (via dism for example) the driver for the I2C Serial I/O and that's it.

It's not required to integrate the specific driver for the touchpad in place, inbox works just fine once the connection to it can be established. As for how to get a Windows installation to work, same thing either installing Intel's Serial I/O o integrating those drivers in the image .

Now a prelim thing for those in the same situation of @htlingual, when installing cleanly Windows the most useful advice I could give you regarding drivers is... leave it up to it! =D Seriously though, whenever I have to service a machine that requires a reinstallation (although I have several master images for that already) the only thing I integrate to the boot image (or that I select at the stage of choosing where to install) is the driver for the storage system.

In this case it's Intel's RST (look for the F6 or floppy drivers, they sometimes call them like that), for AMD based systems it's their SATA driver instead but I'll use this A515-54G as the example. Depending on the configuration, AHCI or RST+Optane (by the way, Optane acceleration is mostly useful for mechanical hard drives, running on NVMe SSDs is enough) one driver or the other would be used but that's the ideal thing: to use them as early as during the installation process.

If loaded through the "Load driver" UI option they'll end up in the installation as well, but if directly integrated into the boot image make sure you do the same for the installation image (install.wim, there may be several in there too).

Once Windows is up, specially newer releases, the rest of the drivers will be populated off of the Windows Update database. Just connect to the Internet and leave it alone for some time, or if you're in a hurry go to Settings -> Update & Security and force an update check. No need for us to figure out which one is the individual manufacturer of each component.

But! If we needed to ID them, it'd be easy through the Device Manager. For example, say this graphics card was unknown (yellow triangle and all), you'd double click the item, go to the details tab and to the Hardware Ids property. You'd see something like this:



There you'll see:

• VEN_XXXX: IDs the vendor, i.e. manufacturer of that piece. 1002 would be AMD, but sometimes they have different IDs in the same company. Think acquisitions and the like.
• DEV_XXXX: IDs the device, i.e. the part. In this case 6760 is an old 7400M series integrated graphics card.
• SUBSYS_XXXXYYYY: I don't recall this clearly so before I give you wrong information I'll just say that this part of the thing references the sub-vendor (since it was an ASUS laptop it'd be ASUS) and something else.
• REV_XX: Is self explanatory haha.

The thing for the subsystem is important and sometimes looked at for important stuff like graphics card because each subvendor could have modified the card one way or another. That's why sometimes generic drivers refuse to be installed even though they supposedly support the X card and instead direct you to the OEM that sold you the thing.

So generally, when wanting to know what the thing is, do a google search with both the vendor and device IDs (e.g. VEN_1002&DEV_6760), that ought to give you an idea of what hardware it is. And if your OEM doesn't segregate the drivers based on the full serial number of the machine at least you'd know you're looking for graphic drivers for that part in their list.

Aaaaaaand I think that's it.

Well, one little thing that could be related to that brightness thing, one of the (maybe the) useful applications that tend to come with laptops is the one handling keyboard special keys if any. For example in our case the Quick Access thing would display in-screen an icon showing when you press CapsLock or NumLock or something to let you know, since the laptop doesn't have any visual indicative that it's on.

So after the drivers are all installed, either by Windows itself or manually, I'd still install that application. The rest doesn't interest me to be honest, but to each their own. I'm also one that always installs things cleanly after getting a new machine haha.

Ohhhhh and if you wanted to go overboard, you could even make a spreadsheet with all of the data, the various versions of the drivers (say... OEM, Windows Update and upstream) and see which one is newer, which one works best, etc. Sometimes OEM (e.g. Acer) would match with Windows Update, but sometimes Windows Update drivers are newer, and upstream is generally newer too but chances are those weren't tested or validated for that machine.

Darn... why do I always en up writing so much?!?!