Microsoft said last week that it is readying the first service pack release of Windows 7, which made its debut last October. The company says that the service pack will contain only minor updates, including driver updates, most of which have already been released individually. Microsoft has not said when it will release SP1 for Windows 7, however the first service pack for Windows Vista was released about 14 months after the product was introduced to the market. Some media outlets are speculating that Microsoft will release the service pack as soon as the fourth quarter of 2010.

What’s In A Service Pack?

Service packs typically contain updates, bug fixes and occasionally apply new features to the operating system. Service packs can also extend features to an operating system that may have been disabled in the initial release. With the service pack, users can count on driver updates for some hardware as well.

Microsoft is indicating that users who patch their operating systems incrementally, (as is recommended by Microsoft) will not have much to cheer about in the Windows 7 SP1. That’s mostly good news. Users who don’t normally (or regularly) apply patches will get much more out of the first service pack, since all current updates will be applied.

If you’re concerned that you’re not getting the right drivers for your computer, or that you’ve perhaps missed a driver update, you don’t need to wait for a service pack to get the drivers you need. A driver maintenance package, like Driver Detective, can help keep you on top of the game when it comes to getting necessary driver updates.

Keeping your drivers updated is very important, especially since OS updates can change the way your system interacts with drivers. A system update can outdate a driver in an instant, and unfortunately the process of manually searching out, downloading and applying drivers can be time-consuming and tedious.

You can also run into problems when you download the wrong driver. Driver Detective has a database of more than 15 million drivers so it knows what your system needs and keeps the correct drivers on hand. Driver Detective not only downloads and installs driver updates, it also retains a copy of each driver that is installed in the event that a driver goes bad. If a driver becomes corrupted, Driver Detective will remove the damaged copy and install a fresh copy before the corrupted driver can cause system problems.

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