Did Santa bring you a new computer for the holidays? If so, you’re in luck! Now is the best time to set yourself up with good maintenance habits that can help you keep the drivers for your new computer operating as it should as time goes on.

Configure Your Computer Now

Especially if your new computer came with Windows 7 installed, you’ll notice that you’ll receive a bevy of updates and patches over the coming months. In addition to patches designed to keep the operating system working safely, many manufacturers will be updating Windows drivers for the hardware they support, and that may be installed on your computer, or attached by you at a later date.

Because many manufacturers are just bringing their updated Windows 7 drivers to market, you may find that the older piece of hardware you really want to keep requires an updated driver to work. If the driver for your hardware wasn’t submitted to Microsoft, Windows may not be aware of it. Check the manufacturer’s Web site for the latest information on the drivers your hardware requires.

In addition to providing information about hardware the manufacturer will support, many manufacturers are identifying older hardware models that they will not support, or whose support will be limited. It’s a good idea to keep yourself up-to-date on the status of support for older hardware. This may save you some anguish in the future and help you avoid an unpleasant surprise. It may also prompt you to start looking for replacement hardware, should it come to that.

One good maintenance habit to get into when it comes to your hardware drivers is to set yourself up with a good driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective has been downloaded millions of times and can track literally millions of drivers for updates. Driver Detective can be invaluable when it comes to managing your drivers. Not only does Driver Detective identify your drivers, it locates them, installs them and monitors them for updates and for proper operation.

If one of your drivers fails, becomes corrupted or requires an update, Driver Detective will locate the correct driver and install it on your computer as soon as the driver is available. You no longer have to check the manufacturer’s Web site for each piece of hardware you own. Driver Detective also keeps a backup of your drivers in case your installed driver becomes damaged or gets deleted accidentally. Ultimately, that means no more wasted time struggling with drivers that don’t work and more productive computer time for you!

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If you’ve spent a lot of time in front of your computer, you may also find yourself spending a lot of time looking for Windows drivers for your computer hardware. One of the downsides of using a PC is that hardware is manufactured by many different companies. These manufacturers don’t use the same software drivers to allow your computer to communicate with the device. In fact, each device has a unique driver.

Some devices made by a company may share a driver. Printers are good examples of that. A printer company may have multiple printers that use the same version or similar versions of a driver. On the other hand, even minor differences among the features of similar devices can require a new driver.

The Hunt For Windows Drivers,/h3>
Windows has been on the market for a long time, and to date, there are literally millions of device drivers out there. Some devices are no longer supported by a manufacturer. When a manufacturer cancels support for a device, it means they will no longer write a driver or keep its driver updated. This can put the user in a bad position because one change or update to the operating system could render your device useless.

This can be frustrating to users because it sometimes requires them to replace hardware that is mechanically sound but no longer has a working software driver. Without the driver, the device may be as useless as it would be if you dropped it down a flight of stairs.

Finding drivers can be difficult, too. Each OS upgrade may require you to visit the support sites for each piece of hardware attached to your computer, download a new driver and install it. Occasionally, installing one driver will interfere with another driver, and your computer (over time) can accumulate quite the collection of outdated drivers.

That’s why I recommend that users install a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective does all of the heavy lifting for you. It identifies the exact drivers your computer needs, downloads them, installs them and monitors them for you. Should anything happen to one of your drivers, or should it be updated by the manufacturer, you’ll always have the latest drivers along with a backup copy on your computer. Driver Detective takes the work out of managing updates for your computer hardware, and having the correct, updated drivers installed on your computer can mean less downtime for you!

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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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Since the release of Windows 7 nearly one month ago, a number of hardware manufacturers have come through with drivers for hardware. The list of non-supported hardware is also growing. If you’re having difficulty finding drivers for Windows, there are a few steps you can take.

Finding Drivers For Windows Without Getting Frustrated

Generally, you’re not likely to have much luck finding Windows 7 drivers for hardware that never got a Vista driver. If this is the case, you may want to seek out third-party drivers or generic drivers if your hardware is common.

If the manufacturer developed a driver for Vista, there’s at least a reasonable chance that they’ll either have developed a driver for Windows 7 or that the Vista driver will work for Windows 7. This isn’t a guarantee by any stretch, but it’s definitely worth the few minutes of your time that it may take to find the driver.

Just because the manufacturer made a driver for Vista doesn’t mean that the device will get Windows 7 support. Check with the manufacturer for their list of supported hardware devices in Windows 7. The manufacturer may also supply information about older hardware and what to do if you have an older model.

Microsoft encouraged hardware manufacturers to supply drivers prior to the release of Windows 7, but many manufacturers are just now releasing their drivers and providing information about what models will and won’t be supported. Models that don’t initially get a new driver may be on a lower-priority schedule, so check with the manufacturer to see if driver support for your device has either been ruled out or delayed.

If the thought of going through an endless number of manufacturers to find driver information is making you queasy, try using a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective is certified to work on all versions of Windows and will locate, download and install drivers for you. Better than that, Driver Detective will manage the drivers you have installed, removing old ones and installing new ones as updates are received. It will also make sure that a damaged driver gets replaced before it can cause problems for you or the rest of your system.

Driver Detective has been downloaded more than 1,000,000 times by users around the world, who trust Driver Detective to keep their system in good working order at all times. If managing drivers for your computer hardware isn’t where you’re at, consider using Driver Detective instead.

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