How important is it to have the right driver software for your computer? Well that depends upon how much you like working with trouble-free computers, I guess. Incorrect drivers aren’t the only source of trouble for a PC, but they do play a major role in determining whether or not your computer hardware functions properly.

Selecting The Correct Driver

In some respects, Apple enjoys a reputation for “trouble-free” computing because it maintains strict control over how hardware (especially third-party hardware) interfaces with the company’s computers. Apple has taken the same approach with software, and the result is a hardware-and-software combination that’s tightly integrated and appears to suffer from fewer problems than its PC counterparts do.

Microsoft has taken a different approach, relying on third-party hardware manufacturers to create as many compatible hardware variations as the market will bear. The result for the consumer is a lower hardware cost, but Microsoft doesn’t exercise the same tight control over the user’s experience that Apple does. PCs running Windows also have a reputation for being difficult to work with.

The inability of some PC hardware to operate compatibly with other PC hardware has fouled up more than one user’s experience and while Microsoft shoulders much of the blame from the consumer’s perspective, the real culprits are more likely to be the hardware manufacturers and the drivers they author. Many hardware manufacturers take their own approach to writing drivers and don’t place a high regard on how their drivers might interoperate with other hardware attached to a user’s computer.

Hardware manufacturers are often slow to come out with compatible drivers and driver updates, which only complicates the user’s overall experience. Saddled on top of this is Microsoft’s somewhat clunky approach to obtaining driver updates. Driver updating at one point was a strictly manual process. Over time, Microsoft has incorporated automatic driver updates into its OS, but some users don’t have this feature configured properly so driver updates are missed, and Microsoft sometimes chooses and/or installs the wrong driver, complicating matters even more. The upshot is that even though Microsoft has automated the process of driver updates, many users are still fearful of the auto-update function due to poor past experiences.

I recommend a driver management program like Driver Detective for reliable, trustworthy driver management. Driver Detective locates, downloads and installs the correct driver and maintains a local backup of the driver. If an installed driver becomes corrupted, damaged or somehow gets deleted or overwritten, Driver Detective can re-install the correct driver instantly, helping the user avoid problems.

Photo Credit: JD Mack, via Flickr