Windows 7 has been on the store shelves for more than six months, and the chief complaint about the OS seems to be the lack of drivers for older peripherals. And newer peripherals, too. Printers seem to be the biggest slowdown for most users and more manufacturers are walking away from certain printer models, presumably to avoid having to write a driver.

What’s So Awful About Windows Drivers

The printer is a special breed of hardware. One element of modern printer design that causes headaches all around is the fact that there are many different models of the same device. One model may be designed to plug directly into a computer’s USB port, while another model of the same device is meant to sit on a network. Functionally, the two devices may be the same. They may use the same design and have the same toner cartridge. They may look virtually identical, but minor differences may mean that each device needs to have its own driver.

Microsoft had hoped to avoid this by insisting that manufacturers have their device drivers ready to go by the time Windows 7 hit the store shelves. For manufacturers that had already gone through the trouble of writing a Vista driver, the task was simple. All they had to do was submit the Vista driver to Microsoft and prove that it worked on Windows 7. If the driver didn’t work, the manufacturer was required to correct the errors by the Windows release date.

Unfortunately, many hardware manufacturers never went as far as actually writing a driver for Vista. That worked well enough because many users never went as far as actually installing Vista. With Windows XP being officially declared “long in the tooth” and nearing its 10th birthday, many users were anxious to upgrade to a more stable operating system.

Microsoft provided Windows 7 and spent a fair amount of time working out the kinks before sending it to market. Hardware manufacturers weren’t so diligent, and after six months, the likelihood of getting additional drivers for older hardware is dimming.

Some users have found workarounds or assistance from third-party drivers. Other users have found that Vista drivers work well enough for their older hardware, when Vista drivers exist. Other users spend hours searching fruitlessly for driver support.

Nothing will help if a manufacturer hasn’t written an updated driver, but a driver management program like Driver Detective can certainly cut down on the amount of time spent searching for and installing driver updates. Driver Detective will locate, download, install and back-up your current suite of drivers automatically. There’s no more time spent looking for the correct drivers – Driver Detective does all the hard work for you!

Photo Credit: Nic McPhee, via Flickr