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Short history lesson: I have successfully gotten my Windows installs onto the internet without using driver CDs since at least Windows 98SE.

I dunno what I'm doing that's so magical; I just install the dang thing.

This totally depends on the network card chipset. A fresh Windows 7 install on my PC requires external NIC drivers before I get on the net.

Same here, I installed Windows 7 on a PC with a fairly recent Asus MB and I had to install the drivers from the CD.