Things that work are nice, especially when it comes to computers. In the world of technology, however, that’s often not the case. Just when you think you have everything working properly, something breaks or stops working. As a technician, this is one of the most common problems I face. A user had a working device, and suddenly, the device stops working.
There are a number of explanations, but one of the first things I check is the device itself. I make certain that the device is properly connected to the computer, has power and appears to be ready to get to work. If there’s nothing obviously wrong with the device, and I can see the device in the computer’s file system, the next thing I look for is a driver update.

Windows Vista May Not Find Your Driver Updates

Windows Vista can automatically download and install OS updates. Most people configure Vista to do this and assume that they’re covered for important updates, including drivers. That’s not a good assumption. Windows will install important OS updates, but driver updates may or may not make Windows’ list of must-have updates.

You could download and install all of the “important” updates for your computer, and still end up with an outdated or incorrect driver. That’s because Windows distinguishes between “important” updates and “recommended” updates. If you want Windows to install the recommended updates in addition to the important ones, you’ll need to reconfigure Windows Update.

From the Start menu, choose All Programs > Windows Updates. From the left side of the window, choose “Change Settings.” Don’t get confused about the “Install updates automatically (recommended)” button. That doesn’t mean Windows Vista will install “recommended” updates. That’s Microsoft’s way of telling you that they recommend that you install updates automatically.

At the bottom of the control pane, there is a checkbox labeled “Include recommended updates when downloading, installing or notifying me about updates.” Activating this box will tell Windows Vista to include updates to the OS that are recommended but not considered important to every Windows Vista user.

Future updates will include all important and recommended updates, including any new drivers that your computer may need. If you’re unsure about allowing Windows Vista to download and install drivers automatically, you can also configure Windows Update to download updates, but ask first before installing anything. Driver Detective can also help you locate, install and manage all of your computer’s drivers seamlessly.

Photo Credit: Edward, via Flickr

Windows Vista is the most modern operating system Microsoft has released. Having said that, Vista still must maintain compatibility with older applications and hardware. Over time, the authors of these legacy applications and older hardware may update their products or update drivers that may be needed to make their applications and hardware work with Windows Vista.

Windows Driver Secret

Once you install the upgraded driver, you may think that your problems have been solved. The new driver works, the hardware or software behaves like you think it should and life is good. (Except for one small detail that you may not even be aware of.)

Windows Vista keeps the old driver. On the surface, that may not seem like a dirty little secret, and if that’s the worst thing that Windows Vista does behind your back that’s probably OK. Unfortunately, a collection of old drivers can make life tough on your computer. The truly unfortunate thing is that “old driver problems” may not crop up right away, and it can become difficult to trace exactly what might be causing your troubles.
Fortunately, there are ways to manage your drivers, new and old. Driver Detective can automate the task of managing your drivers. It will search for and install new drivers, and remove old drivers so they’re not able to cause problems later on.

If you want to take a look at your collection of old drivers, Windows Vista gives you a way to do that. You’ll need to get to a command prompt to start.

From the Run box, type

devmgmt.msc

This will open the more user-friendly Device Manager. From the View menu, choose Show hidden devices. You’ll get an expandable tree-branch diagram showing the devices attached to the computer. Unused device drivers should be grayed out in the branch diagram.

Select the grayed out driver(s) and right click to pull up a contextual menu. You can either update the driver or uninstall the old driver. Before you decide that every hidden driver is unnecessary, understand that some hidden drivers belong to devices that you may plug into your computer only once in awhile. If you still plug the device in (could be a USB drive or a removable drive, a MP3 music player, etc.) you’ll want to keep the hidden driver! Using this method, old drivers can be safely uninstalled manually, preventing future problems and conflicts.

If you have a computer that runs the Windows Operating System, you may come to believe over time that the computer is slowing down. In many cases, this is true, but how can you really know that your computer is slowing down, or how sluggish it’s getting? Are specific drivers causing problems at start up or shut down? How would you know?

Vista Event Viewer Can Trace Start Up and Shut Down Trouble

If you run Windows Vista, you can access a report generated by the OS itself that will tell you exactly what’s happening when you start up and shut down your computer. The Event Viewer is good for determining whether you have a problem, and if so, where it is. This is an excellent way to track your Windows Vista operating system over time. If you pay attention to what your computer is doing, you’ll know whether the computer seems slow or really is slow, and better yet, you’ll know what’s the most likely cause of the delay.

The Event Viewer, which is built into the OS, maintains a log of the things your computer does when it starts up and shuts down, as well as at other critical times. The Event Viewer does much more than this, but it can be especially useful when you’re trying to monitor your computer’s performance.
To get to the Event Viewer, choose Run and type eventvwr.msc in the box. The Event Viewer utility will start up. Choose Applications and Servce Log\Microsoft\Windows\Diagnostics-Performance to get to the Diagnostics and Performance part of the Event Viewer.

Activate the center pane (marked Operational) and you’ll see a time-stamped list of “events” that have occurred at the most recent startup or shutdown. Select an event on the list. In the pane immediately below the Operational pane, you can get general or specific details about the event, when it occurred, what happened, what triggered the “event” and so on. Windows will keep track of what time it started to boot and what time the boot process ended. If you monitor this particular statistic, you can tell if your computer is booting more slowly over time.

Each event in the viewer is tagged with a numerical ID. Event numbers between 100 and 199 indicated events that took place at startup. Event numbers between 200 and 299 indicate events that occurred at shutdown. Events numbered between 300 and 399 are related to standby performance and events numbered between 400 and 499 are related to system performance.
If you haven’t played around with the Windows Event Viewer in Vista, take a few minutes to check out this useful system performance-debugging tool.

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In my last post, I talked about the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. This program can tell you whether your computer is ready for Windows 7. Many users, however, haven’t upgraded from earlier versions of Windows. If you’re not ready to upgrade to Windows 7, you can still consider an upgrade to Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Works Well For Home Users

Although Windows Vista has gotten a lot of bad press, the truth is that most home users don’t find it to be terribly troublesome. In fact, it has a lot of nice features, many of which have been carried forward into Windows 7.

Drivers can be a source of problems with Windows Vista, and Vista doesn’t work well with Active Directory. The interoperability problems with AD will cause problems in the workplace, and IT professionals have largely overlooked Vista for this reason. For most home users, however, the Active Directory issues with Vista are unlikely to cause major problems.

Home users are notoriously slow to update their operating systems, even when they have a reasonably good reason to. If your computer is still running an older version of the Windows OS, now is a good time to consider upgrading to Vista. Upgrading isn’t usually without at least a few hitches, so if you plan to upgrade to Vista, you’ll want to consult the Vista Upgrade Advisor to help you spot potential problems with hardware or with your software.

As a general rule of thumb, your computer must have the following in order to run Windows Vista (Home Premium/Business/Ultimate) successfully:

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 GB of system memory
40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
WDDM Driver
128 MB of graphics memory
Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
32 bits per pixel
DVD-ROM drive
Audio Output
Internet access

The requirements are slightly different for Windows Home Basic. You’ll need less installed memory and less hard disk space. The graphics demands for Windows Home Basic are also reduced.

If your system doesn’t meet the basic requirements, or barely meets the basic requirements, you can expect degraded performance when you try to run applications on top of your OS. If you find that you need to do major upgrades to your computer hardware in order to run Windows Vista, you may want to consider a newer computer. You can get some really nice deals on capable, low-cost computers right now, and these computers come with Vista pre-loaded.

Photo Credit: Brett Pierce