Microsoft Won't Be Distributing Third-Party Updates In Windows 8

Change Means That Third-Parties Are On Their Own For Distributions

This doesn’t change things for Windows driver updates, however, not all third-party manufacturers update their drivers through the Windows Update feature. The change in policy for Windows 8 means that users will have to remain on duty when it comes to keeping their Windows applications up-to-date.

In terms of device drivers, the status quo doesn’t guarantee that users have the latest device drivers, and that’s going to continue in Windows 8. Right now, the experience of updating device drivers is a mixed bag. With some third parties participating in Windows Update and others doing their own thing, users need to keep track of what’s being updated regularly and what isn’t.

For busy users, or for those who are not technically savvy, a better approach to driver maintenance is using a driver management utility like Driver Detective. Driver Detective determines – based on your computer system – what driver updates you need and downloads them right to your computer. The updates are installed and a backup copy of the current driver is stored locally, in case something happens to the active copy. You can also roll back to an older version of the driver if a new driver update doesn’t behave the way you think it should.

You don’t have to remember to check for updates. Driver Detective does that for you. You also don’t have to keep track of a lot of hardware configuration information, because Driver Detective does that, too! This is ideal for manufactures that use multiple third party component options within a single model. Driver Detective determines what your system needs – not based on the model number of your computer – but based on the components actually installed in your system. If you update a video card, add a different mouse, or attach a new peripheral device, Driver Detective can track and maintain those devices, too.

Driver Detective is one of the best driver management utilities available today. Millions of users have already downloaded it and rely on it to keep their computer systems up to date. Download your copy today and say goodbye to outdated device driver problems!

Photo Credit: Wesley Fryer, via Flickr

Driver Maintenance Won't Go Away

Driver Maintenance Can Be A Drag

There’s usually nothing to remind you to update drivers; you have to do that yourself. If you’re busy, you may forget to take time to maintain your PC. (Not a good approach, by the way.) If you’re not technically savvy, you may not realize that you need to update your own drivers. You may also know that you need to update your drivers, but you may not know how, or which drivers you need.

This all adds up to the strong potential that you’ll miss out on important or critical driver updates that your computer needs to ensure proper operation and security. Sometimes, important operating system updates like service packs can help you remember to update your drivers. Other times, your computer hardware just quits working, or starts behaving badly. Occasionally, a little overzealous file system cleaning can result in the deletion of drivers. You can also accidentally replace a good driver with a bad or incorrect one, and because you’re talking about bits and bytes, a driver – just like any other data on the computer – can become corrupted.

As I talked about last week, most users don’t keep backups of their hardware drivers. That complicates things somewhat when you need to reinstall a hardware driver for whatever reason. If downloading and installing drivers isn’t something you do regularly, you may not know what drivers your system needs, where to find them or how to install them.

That’s why I recommend Driver Detective as a solid approach to Windows hardware driver management. Driver Detective installs quickly and manages all aspects of all of your Windows hardware drivers. Driver Detective searches for the correct driver and driver updates for the drivers your system needs. It downloads, installs, monitors and maintains the drivers, and stores a local backup of the driver in case the installed driver becomes corrupted or lost.

You never have to worry about missing a driver update when you let Driver Detective worry about handling the driver maintenance for your system. More than one million users have downloaded Driver Detective and rely on it to keep their system updated and trouble-free!

Photo Credit: left-hand, via Flickr

Hardware Driver Problems Culprit In Two Of Top Five USB Complaints

Device Detection, Operation Can Be Troublesome

The chief complaint among consumers about USB devices is the inability of their computer system to “find” or detect the device, once it has been plugged in. The ability of the computer to locate a USB device and mount the file system is dependent upon the hardware driver. Problems can arise when the incorrect driver in installed, or the correct driver has been damaged or corrupted.

Replacing the driver is in order in either case, but consumers need to be sure that they’re loading the correct driver. Loading the wrong driver won’t get you very far, and loading a generic driver may not allow the user to access all of the available device functions.

The third most often-repeated complaint, according to the iYogi survey, is that the high speed USB port doesn’t function. USB ports come in three flavors: the “old” USB 1.0/1.1 specification; the faster, newer USB 2.0 type and the newly released 3.0 standard. USB devices can use a number of different physical connectors, but most computers provide a “Standard A” physical receptacle. The 2.0 USB implementation is currently the most popular, but users sometimes say that devices plugged into the computer’s USB 2.0 port aren’t recognized.

If the incorrect drivers for the device are installed, Windows may not recognize the high-speed nature of the device, leading to poor device performance. Similarly, Windows can recognize the device attached to the port, but cannot interface with it. Again, this situation is most likely the result of a hardware driver problem. Finding, downloading and installing the correct driver or driver update may solve the problem, but it can be time-consuming.

To avoid problems like these, I recommend that my customers use a driver management software program. I prefer Driver Detective because it takes over the responsibility of finding, downloading and installing the correct device drivers for USB and all other hardware devices attached to your computer. It also keeps backup copies of the current driver on –hand and can replace a defective driver before problems arise.

Photo Credit: Jacobo Garcia, via Flickr

Updating Windows Drivers: When Should You?

The Hunt For Windows Drivers

If you find a driver update for your hardware, read a bit about the driver before installing it. The driver update may “repair” a function that you don’t or can’t use, or it may apply only to certain usage circumstances that don’t affect you. In this case, applying the driver update immediately probably isn’t necessary.

If the driver update resolves issues that affect you, make sure your system is patched to the revision level required by the driver update before installing the new driver. It sounds silly, but I’ve encountered computers that are missing several OS revisions but have the latest driver (which may or may not work properly). In short, make sure your system meets all the OS requirements for a particular driver before downloading and installing the driver update.

If, for some reason, you’re holding off on patching your system, you may also have to hold off on updating your driver until your system issues are sorted out. For example, you may have some specialized software or hardware that will only work with a particular revision of the operating system. Updating the operating system may introduce instabilities into your software or hardware or may render your specialized goods inoperable. In this case, there’s not much you can do except wait until all of your devices can be safely updated.

Windows 7 does allow you to run an XP emulator. Depending upon your configuration issues, this might be an option that will enable you to keep both your newer and older devices happy. For XP emulation to work, your BIOS needs to support virtualization. You’ll also need licensed copies of Windows 7 and Windows XP. Your older devices can be used under XP and your newer devices can be run under Windows 7. It’s not a perfect solution, but it may be enough to allow you to keep critical hardware running until you can find a suitable Windows 7 solution.

If you have real concerns about applying a system-level revision, make a backup of your system before upgrading/updating it. Be sure your old driver is included in this backup. Patch the system as needed, then apply the new driver. In a perfect world, everything should work, but when this isn’t the case, you may need to revert to your previous operating state.

Generally, your system will work best if it is kept up-to-date for both system patches and driver revisions. You can set your OS to update automatically. You can also control which patches are applied automatically and which require your approval. Using a product like Driver Detective, you can also have this automated peace of mind, knowing your drivers are updated as soon as revisions become available.

Photo Credit: Florian, via Flickr

Driver Detective Is A Timesaver

Driver Detective Does What You Don’t Have Time To Do

Driver Detective saves me a lot of time. Whether I’m troubleshooting a driver problem or just performing routine maintenance, I need to spend some amount of time with the computer. With Driver Detective, however, I don’t need to check on the status of the installed drivers, because Driver Detective does that for me.

I don’t need to figure out whether a driver has gotten corrupted or deleted because Driver Detective watches the installed drivers and can tell me whether something has gone wrong. I don’t need to spend even one minute going out to a manufacturer’s Web site and checking for driver updates because Driver Detective does that, too. When a driver update is released, Driver Detective automatically downloads it and installs it.

I don’t need to back up a copy of the installed driver because Driver Detective will take care of that for me. I also don’t need to back up the registry before I install a new driver because Driver Detective has that covered, too. In fact, I don’t even need to install new driver updates because once again, Driver Detective takes care of that.

If you’ve ever performed these steps manually, you already know how much a driver management program like Driver Detective can help. If you’ve never downloaded drivers for your hardware, I invite you to spend an afternoon searching for the correct drivers for your hardware, downloading them, and installing them. It’s not fun, but it is time-consuming. You also run the risk that one or more of your driver downloads will goof up something else on your computer. Then you can have the experience of rolling back a driver update and restoring the backup copy of your registry. (You did remember to back up the registry, didn’t you?)

After spending an afternoon on this little project, you’ll understand why I like, use and recommend Driver Detective.

Photo Credit: Brian Suda, via Flickr

When Will Windows Driver Updates Be Available?

Driver Updates Aren’t As Automatic As You Think

The issue of Windows drivers came right to the forefront with Windows Vista. Many manufacturers didn’t provide updated drivers for their existing products. In fact, many vendors basically abandoned the products they had on store shelves and in development because they would not create a working driver that was compatible with Windows Vista.

The “whys” involved in the situation are too long to go into, but many devices were not designed with a newer operating system environment. With Vista (and with XP to a lesser extent), manufacturers had to worry about making 32-bit AND 64-bit drivers. Windows XP and earlier operating systems were designed to work as 32-bit systems; 64-bit operation was an option but it wasn’t all that popular.

With Windows Vista, the system has a 32-bit mode, but its really designed as a 64-bit system. This is something of a problem for users who upgrade their system bit-by-bit because running the 64-bit version of any operating system requires you to have a processor that can DO 64-bit processing. If you were hoping to get by with just an OS upgrade from XP to Vista, you’d be disappointed unless your processor had the right stuff.

At the time Windows Vista was introduced, Microsoft was betting that most computer users had the right stuff to run Vista, and most peripheral manufacturers were betting that most users didn’t. They hedged their bets a little bit by not writing Vista drivers for much of their product line. By slowing down the upgrade curve, manufacturers could save themselves a lot of work and head off consumer complaints – at least for a while. Windows Vista was a nice operating system, but for the lack of drivers for even the most common peripherals.

When Windows 7 hit the shelves, hardware manufacturers were behind the 8-ball, so to speak. They had no functional 64-bit drivers but the consumers were squarely in the “upgrade the OS” corner. Windows 7 is a nice operating system, too. Even a year after its release, manufacturers are scrambling to catch up by releasing drivers for their existing product line. No one should expect that third party manufacturers will come to the table later in the game. Instead, consumers should reward the manufacturers who are ready with Windows 7 drivers, and leave behind the manufacturers that want to engage in brinksmanship on the issue of drivers. Windows 7 turns out to be a great opportunity for companies with ready-to-go drivers that want to make the most of the switch to Windows 7.

Photo Credit: whatmegsaid, via Flickr

You Can't Always Rely On Windows For Driver Updates

The Cost Of Not Having Drivers

Microsoft can’t be expected to hit a home run each time it steps up to the plate, but without having updated Vista drivers for hardware, there’s little incentive to upgrade for the home user. In some ways, Microsoft can force an upgrade by not allowing manufacturers to ship with an older version of the Windows OS – which Microsoft did to address customer complaints – but that just pushes the problem farther down the line.

We’re at that point right now with Windows 7. Windows 7 was meant to install on top of Windows Vista. The penalty for having skipped Vista is that the user must then do a “clean” install, which turns out to be a messy prospect. Windows 7 came with a raft of third party drivers, but that doesn’t free the user from having to do manual updates.

Having done them countless times, I can say that manual driver updates can be painful. Now, Windows can download and install driver updates if the system is configured to do so and if Windows Update has found (or been handed) an updated driver. If not, you’re manually updating your computer either as often as you remember, or when you start having hardware problems.

I’ve solved this problem by using a driver management tool called Driver Detective. Driver Detective does more than just locate the correct driver for a particular installation. It locates, downloads and installs updated drivers automatically. It also archives the correct driver on the hard disk and monitors the operation of each driver so that it can quickly reload a driver that’s been damaged or deleted.

What I like best about Driver Detective is that it saves me the time of having to go out and locate new drivers or find old versions of drivers that I want to use. I don’t have to wonder about whether a driver is current. Driver Detective finds out for me. I don’t have to figure out whether a driver is corrupted, because not only does Driver Detective figure that out, it also replaces bad drivers.

Not every IT “tool” is worth having , but Driver Detective is one of those software packages that is. If you haven’t already, download a copy and see for yourself how easy it can be to make driver management problems a thing of the past.

Photo Credit: Jenny Dowling, via Flickr

Microsoft Cuts Support Options For Windows XP Users

Unsupported OS Can Be Tricky

Running an unsupported OS can be tricky, since users won’t be able to get patches and revisions. Although development on the XP OS ended long ago, Microsoft was still providing maintenance releases that closed holes and kept the system as up-to-date as possible.

According to Microsoft, Service Pack 3 can be applied only to computers running the 32-bit version of Windows XP. Prior to installing Service Pack 3, the computer must also have Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 1(a) installed. These service packs are still available from the Microsoft Web site.

If you’re not sure whether your computer is a 32-bit or 64-bit system, you can find out by taking the following steps.
Go to Start > Run
Enter sysdm.cpl and click OK.
This will open a dialog box that will provide additional information about your system. Within the dialog box, select the General tab. If your system is a 32- bit system, you’ll see the words “Windows XP Professional Version XXXX under System. XXXX will be a date, expressed as a year.
If your system is a 64-bit system, you’ll see a slightly different set of words under System: “Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Version XXXX.” Again XXXX represents a year.

Service Pack 3 isn’t used with 64-bit systems, so it’s important to know whether you need the service pack or not. Do not install Service Pack 3 if you have a 64-bit system. Microsoft has provided a different method for patching and updating 64-bit versions of the XP operating system.
The installed user base for Windows XP is still quite large, however more users are adopting Windows 7. Importantly, many of the new adopters are Microsoft’s corporate customers, most of whom have been working with XP for nearly 10 years. In the coming year, Microsoft will likely examine its plan to drop support for Windows XP altogether.

Photo Credit: Nick Perla, via Flickr

Why You Need Driver Detective

Driver Management Is Time Management

As a computer professional, one of the things I can say with certainty is that people simply want their computers to work. Most people don’t know or care how their computer system operates; they simply want their computer to work reliably when they need it.

Problems seem to crop up out of nowhere. This can be exceptionally frustrating for people who don’t understand the mystical inner workings of their computers or the Windows OS. Automatic updates to the OS are generally good, but people don’t seem to understand that the update process can change the way their computer operates, or require that other non-OS components be updated, too.

Security patches can shut down the normal operation of a working driver in a heartbeat. Users often don’t know that they need to look for updates regularly, or rely on the Windows Update mechanism to detect and deliver new driver updates.

Windows is good at a lot of things, but sometimes it chooses the wrong driver, or isn’t configured to pick up driver updates as “critical.” This can cause exceptional trouble for users who, in trying to do the right thing (update their OS), create problems for themselves outside of the OS.

That’s why I recommend Driver Detective as a way to automate driver maintenance on computers. Driver Detective is a trusted piece of software that has been downloaded millions of times. Driver Detective identifies and tracks all drivers installed on the computer. It automatically searches for, downloads and installs driver updates as soon as they are available. The correct driver for your particular system is downloaded every time. There are no mistakes and no missed driver updates.

Automating driver maintenance will save time and energy, too. Driver Detective an not only download updates, but it can also restore a driver that’s been damaged or deleted accidentally. This is a big help in terms of troubleshooting and problem-avoidance.

Some people like to tinker with their computers. For them, locating and downloading drivers may be the ideal way to spend an afternoon. On the other hand, if you simply want your computer to work the way it’s supposed to, you’ll want to add Driver Detective to your routine.

Photo Credit: Charles Kaiser, via Flickr

Windows Doesn't Always Detect The Correct Drivers

Windows Gets It Wrong

Windows is often very good at detecting the correct driver for an installed piece of hardware, but occasionally it will select the wrong driver for your device or miss an update. You may, or may not, notice the problem right away, depending upon what functions have been lost. To correct the problem, you can download and install the correct driver manually, but this is a time consuming process. If you rely on the manual correction method, you’ll need to correct the mistake each time Windows errs in its driver choice. You may also miss out on updates from the driver manufacturer.

Maintaining computers takes up a large portion of my time, so I’m all for anything that works correctly and automates tedious manual processes like finding, downloading and installing Windows drivers. I’m also all for anything that can help prevent problems from arising in the future. Driver Detective helps on both fronts. With Driver Detective loaded onto your computer, you can be sure that you will always have the correct driver for your computer’s configuration. You’ll also have a backup copy of the driver handy in case something goes wrong. Driver Detective also maintains your drivers by watching for, locating, downloading and installing driver updates when they appear.

You don’t have to wait for Windows to pick up the correct driver and you never have to worry about using the wrong driver for your installed devices when you turn your driver management over to Driver Detective. Simply install Driver Detective and let the software do the rest. Any time a driver update is released for your installed hardware, Driver Detective will find it, download it and install it. Driver Detective provides a backup for your installed drivers to prevent problems from occurring should your installed driver become damaged, corrupted or accidentally deleted.

Driver Detective has been downloaded and used for years by people who want to take care of their computers but don’t want to spend hours doing it. It works well and that’s why I tell my clients to use Driver Detective as their driver management solution.

Photo Credit: Ariel Wants A Chip, via Flickr