With the advent of Windows 7, it would be nice to report that Windows driver problems are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, driver problems are here to stay as long as Windows uses drivers to interface with hardware.

Solving Driver Problems Is Crucial

Driver problems can render a new (or old) piece of hardware completely useless, or they can disable hardware functions. Driver problems can seem to crop up suddenly, especially following an upgrade or addition of some sort, or they can plague a piece of hardware from the day you take it out of the box. There are literally millions of drivers out there. Finding the correct driver for your hardware lies somewhere between science and art these days.

For the last several major revisions, Windows has been equipped with the ability to identify and load the “correct” driver for your attached hardware. That sounds good because it means less work for the end user, right? In practice, however, Windows gets it wrong sometimes, and loading the wrong driver can be just as disastrous as not having a driver at all.

Windows comes with a number of specific and generic drivers, to be sure. For some common hardware, the user needs to look no farther than Windows itself. For other hardware, users must rely on the hardware manufacturer to write and update drivers as needed. When a manufacturer decides that it will no longer update a driver, that decision becomes a kiss of death for the no-longer-supported hardware. The next OS patch or revision may render the unsupported device completely useless.

There’s little the end user can do once a decision is made to drop support for a piece of hardware. Don’t assume that the hardware that’s being dropped is old, either. Many pieces of hardware have lifespans measured in months because the manufacturer has decided not to support the device any longer.

For the most part, however, you can get good results from using a driver management program like Driver Detective to find, install and update your computer’s complement of hardware drivers. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used millions of times to manage hardware drivers.

Driver Detective works on all versions of Windows, and can help keep your computer up-to-date on drivers. Using the most updated drivers can help you avoid more serious problems down the road.

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Microsoft is breathing a small sigh of relief as Windows 7 approaches its two-month “shelf” anniversary. Windows has been available to the public since October 22, and some significant evidence suggests that Windows 7 converts can expect fewer Windows 7 driver problems than what was seen with Windows Vista after its initial release.

Installation Tops Windows 7 Problems

Not surprisingly, issues with Windows 7 installation topped the list of the ten most common problems with Windows 7 as reported by iYogi last month. Nearly a third of the survey’s 100,000 respondents said that they had experienced problems with installing the product. Windows 7 converts reported that under certain circumstances, the installation process would stall about two-thirds of the way through the install routine. The failure would require Windows users to stop and start again, often after entering a code that instructs the Windows installer to ignore plug-ins.

iYogi’s top-ten list was noticeably sparse on hardware-related problems. The installer did trip over certain DVD units. The units were recognized by the BIOS but not by the Windows 7 installation routine. This issue is also correctable but can slow the DVD-based installation process down.

Windows 7 converts are finding that not all graphics cards are created equal. About 1 out of 6 users reported that the popular Windows 7 Aero theme, which features transparent window frames, was not working. Most issues with Aero can be traced to graphics cards and/or processors that are not up to the semi-formidable task that Aero presents. In addition, some Windows 7 users report that the “snap” function on Windows 7’s Aero theme doesn’t always work as advertised.

Other Windows 7 problems that made the top-ten list include problems with iTunes and iPhone syncing; the lost of customized icons when a new theme is applied in Windows 7; Taskbar problems (which are more related to the visual design of the Taskbar rather than to the actual operation (or misoperation) of the Taskbar); “missing” applets like Mail and Movie Maker; too many minidumps and hidden file extensions.

For the most part, the last half of the list isn’t really representative of “problems” with Windows 7. Rather, they represent changes in the way the OS operates, which users may not initially recognize. With Windows 7, it is more difficult to tell whether a Taskbar icon represents a running application or a shortcut to an inactive application. Microsoft has also changed the way Mail, Movie Maker and other applets are loaded. Windows 7 users must now download these apps from Windows Live Essentials –they’re no longer automatically included with the standard load. By default, Windows 7 hides file extensions. This can be corrected by changing the preferences to show file extensions by default.

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It’s easy… almost nice… to blame someone else for a problem you’ve encountered with your computer. Unfortunately, the largest trouble source for a computer is usually the operator! How do you recover from something you’ve done yourself… like loading the wrong driver onto your computer?

Many Actions Can Cause Driver Problems

If you’ve ever had one of those “Homer Simpson moments” … you know… the kind that make you say “D’oh!”… you know what I’m talking about. You’ve done something that’s admittedly stupid, and you’ve recognized the error of your ways a split-second too late to correct it or prevent damage. The damage always seems directly proportional to the ease with which you were allowed to shoot yourself in the foot, too.

This is especially difficult to deal with when you do something unfortunate to your computer. Correcting self-inflicted damage can take hours, sometimes days. The problem can be made more difficult to solve when symptoms don’t occur right away or you don’t know what to do to “undo” your mistake.

When it comes to drivers for the Windows OS, I recommend that users invest in a driver management program called Driver Detective. Driver Detective will automatically located, download and install the correct driver for your computer’s hardware every time. It also backs up your existing driver set so you can easily revert back to your former drivers if you don’t like the way your computer operates, or you run into trouble after a driver upgrade or reinstallation takes place.

Driver Detective keeps working to monitor your drivers once they’re installed. If a driver becomes corrupted, gets deleted accidentally or gets updated by the manufacturer, you’re all set! Driver Detective will replace corrupted and missing drivers, and will locate, download and install driver updates.

You can’t get better service, except from a professional technician. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used more than 1,000,000 times by users around the world and it works hard to keep your computer in good working order.

Using driver management software like Driver Detective is a good idea for users who want to keep their systems up-to-date but don’t have the experience to do this on their own and don’t have the money to pay a professional computer technician to do the work for them.

You can download and try Driver Detective free and it works on any version of Windows!

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Windows 7, which has been out on the store shelves for about six weeks, seems to be getting good reviews from users who have installed it and use it regularly. PC World just released the results of a survey it conducted. The survey questioned Windows 7 users about their overall experiences with Windows 7 to see if the OS really lived up to the pre-release billing it received. Aside from missing drivers for some hardware and other similar glitches, users rated Windows 7 a relative hit.

Windows 7 Transition Has Been Relatively Smooth

According to the survey, more than 8 out of 10 respondents performed a clean installation, with just slightly fewer than 2 out of 10 installing the OS over a previous installation of Vista. More than 8 out of 10 users reported that their installation went off without a hitch worth noting and an additional 13% said the installation process went “fairly well.”

Roughly translated, 97% of Windows 7 users installed their OS upgrade with few or no problems. (PC World had more than 550 respondents to their survey.) That’s a major improvement over the results of a similar survey PC World conducted when Microsoft introduced Windows XP to the marketplace. In that survey, about half of all respondents reported serious difficulty when installing Windows XP.

In terms of performance, about 6% of PC World’s users rated Windows 7’s performance as poor, and 86% reported that they definitely would not go back to their old operating system. In all, that’s a pretty rosy evaluation of Windows 7. The operating system still suffers to some extent from drivers that are either not forthcoming from the vendor or are late to the party.

In some cases, manufacturers have opted not to support certain products in their line and that’s causing some grief for users. Many users report having to search for compatible drivers that will work with currently unsupported hardware. For those users, a driver management product like Driver Detective can be of invaluable assistance. Driver Detective will not only search for the correct driver for your hardware, it will also download and install the drivers for you. Each driver is kept up-to-date and should anything unfortunate happen to the driver software, Driver Detective will automatically uninstall the corrupted driver and reinstall a new one! Few things are easier to work with than Driver Detective.

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