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 Download your copy today and say goodbye to outdated device driver problems!

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How Your Windows Device Drivers Affect Battery Performance

Laptops Are Meant To Use Low Power

Laptops are meant to use low power, and that sometimes means making adjustments to the way devices consume power. When you do a driver install and you just do the default configuration, (as most users do – because it’s the “safest” installation, right?) most often, you’re guaranteeing that your battery life will be short. Why? In the absence of any other configuration, the default firmware initialization for most devices calls for the highest available power. If all of your laptop devices use high power, your battery life will definitely suffer. Select devices in high power mode can reduce your battery life by as much as 25%!

The default configuration can’t possibly take into account what your actual power usage needs are, so it assumes the worst and makes as much power as possible available to a device. On a desktop computer, power management is generally not a consideration. On a laptop, where the manufacturers have already made compromises on the chipsets, the maximum memory capacity and the processor speed, these concessions must extend through to your devices as well.

If you’re not in a situation where you need your wireless mouse, or your network card, you can manage the power consumption of these devices much more effectively, and ensure that you have enough battery life to get your work done.

Doing power management via the device driver also means having the most recent device driver loaded. Manufacturers often tweak their driver-level power management capabilities, and the only way to take advantage of this is to make sure you have the most recent device driver for your computer.

With Windows, you can’t always be certain that Microsoft will pass through device driver updates to you. That has nothing to do with Microsoft; some third-party developers don’t give their driver updates to Microsoft. For those devices, it’s up to you to go out and get the latest driver updates – or at least check regularly for them.

That’s why I recommend Driver Detective. Driver Detective takes the guesswork out of device driver maintenance. It’s highly reliable and helps to ensure that you’ll always have the drivers your computer needs.

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Backing Up and Restoring Windows Hardware Drivers

Know What You’re Backing Up and How To Access It

If you ask a user how to back something up, s/he might be able to tell you how to set up a backup, or even where the backed up data are stored. That’s good, but the step few users (and technicians for that matter) take is learning how to restore data from a backup. When a restore is needed, amazingly few people can actually correctly and completely restore data, even if the restored data are intact, ready and waiting.

Why is this important? Having a backup of your data (whether they’re application data or system data) can save significant time, effort, expense and aggravation. Knowing where the backup is stored and how to restore the data is critical. Why even have a backup if you don’t know how to restore the missing data?

When it comes to system data, few users can tell you even simple things, like where the hardware drivers are stored. For the record, drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\DriverStore folder. You can make a backup of this folder “by hand” by simply copying the contents of the folder to another folder, or better yet, a removable storage device. If you ever need to reload or replace the driver, you have a fresh, working copy available.

You might argue that this step is unnecessary, since you could go to the manufacturer’s website to download the correct driver. That assumes you have Internet connectivity. If you’re having driver problems or system problems, you can’t assume that you’ll have access to any network, so it’s best to keep a backup of your Windows hardware drivers handy.

For me, the better way to back up drivers – and to manage the entire hardware driver process – is to use Driver Detective. Driver Detective monitors all of the drivers installed on your computer, and stores a backup copy, in case a driver becomes corrupted or goes missing. Driver Detective also looks out for updated drivers, retrieves them and installs them for you. Download your copy of Driver Detective today and see for yourself what a difference it can make!

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Intel Hardware Driver Update Improves Performance

Driver Updates Can Deliver Performance Improvements

Ultra-low voltage devices are usually the super-thin or compact notebooks, and have been widely used by Hewlett Packard and Samsung. According to Intel, these devices will see the most improvement, but any device with a Sandy Bridge processor will benefit from the driver update. The driver is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The upgrade will improve playability on certain 3D games and other graphics-intensive applications.

Intel is also working on improvements to its processor architecture and expects to release its Ivy Bridge processor early next year. The Ivy Bridge processor will be optimized to handle multiple 4K HD video, among other things.

The driver update is a good reminder that routine driver maintenance can deliver more than just patches, fixes and stability to an existing driver. Users sometimes take driver updates for granted, assuming that the updates are offered to “fix” problems. When everything is working, there’s little incentive to update a driver.
In this case, users can experience a significant performance boost just by updating a driver. Updating drivers isn’t hard work, but it can take a lot of time. If you know a driver update is waiting, you can download it, or in some cases Windows will download it for you.

If you apply the update and for some reason don’t like it, you’ll need to go back to the manufacturer’s site to download the older version of the driver and re-install it. Driver management software like Driver Detective will enable you to roll back from a driver update without all of the fuss. Driver Detective keeps backup copies of the current driver and provides rollback capabilities if the new driver application doesn’t work as you would like it to.

In addition, Driver Detective will go out and find new driver updates, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on performance boosts, patches and fixes again. Driver Detective is easy to load, easy to configure and easy to use. Download your copy today and find out why more than 1,000,000 users have turned over their driver management to Driver Detective.

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Windows 8 Preview Shows Driver Roles

Windows 8 Still Has Device Drivers

It’s unlikely that Windows hardware drivers will go away anytime soon, and Windows 8 confirms that. There’s still a lot of work to be done in terms of having operable drivers, but that’s one reason the Windows 8 beta has been handed over to developers a year or more before it’s consumer release.

Windows 8 is clearly focused on mobile computing, touch screen support and mobile devices will be right at home with the newest version of Windows. That doesn’t mean that the desktop crowd will be short-changed, however. Windows 8 will still provide exceptional support to office-based computers.

There are no plans to dump the good work that Windows 7 has done, so that means Windows 8 will be more like an extension of the current Windows OS rather than a forklift replacement. Windows 8 does support Adobe Flash, sort of; initially, there was some concern that Flash support would be excluded altogether. Not quite the case, but W8 won’t support plug-ins for IE10.

If you want to view plug-in content, Windows 8 will help you out. If you want to run Flash content, you’ll need to run an older version of the OS with plug-in support. It’s not a compromise that’s bound to make a lot of people happy, but many observers speculate that Flash is on its last legs anyway. HTML5 provides a much more attractive (and Flash-free) viewing alternative for the user. Apple has already dumped Flash support on mobile devices like the iPhone and the iPad.

From the advertiser’s perspective, HTML5 can deliver ad support without the need for Flash. Microsoft feels comfortable in deprecating its support for Flash on mobile devices because a viable alternative already exists in the marketplace, and that alternative is being used significantly.

Security is also being taken seriously in the new Windows 8 build. All boot components must reauthenticate each time the system is booted, and if a discrepancy is noted, the system automatically goes into the Windows Recovery Environment. This alone will make it much harder for rootkits, viruses and other nasties to take up residence on a mobile (or stationary) device running Windows 8.

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Graphics Drivers Hold Up Intel's Windows 7 Certification

Thinner Notebooks Kept Waiting

Netbook manufacturers that planned to Cedar Trail, will need to wait until the chipset achieves Microsoft’s Windows 7 certification, which may not occur until October or later. The new netbook chipsets are reportedly smaller and more efficient. The change in design will allow manufacturers to jettison the cooling fan, and offer a battery life of about 10 hours.

The Atom, Intel’s netbook and mobile device platform, was first introduced in 2008. The newest version of the chipset will offer Blu-Ray support, Fast Boot, HDMI and DisplayPort output options, Intel Wireless Music and Wireless Display, PC Sync and more. The new chipset could make netbooks (as well as other platforms) much more attractive and versatile.

There’s no indication that the delay in certification will cause delays for Intel’s next chipset release, the Medfield, which offers a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design, or the Clover Trail chip, which is expected in the second half of 2012. The Medfield is currently expected to hit the market in the first half of 2012.

For such a media-intensive chip, the failure of the graphics drivers to pass certification requirements is significant. Intel will no doubt redouble its efforts to bring the chipset to market before the end of 2011. How problematic the certification delay is remains to be seen.

Netbooks were an almost instant hit when they were first introduced to the market, but consumers have turned their attentions to tablet computers. The delay of an updated Cedar Trail netbook platform by sixty days may not put a significant dent in sales or consumer interest in new netbook products.

The Atom, however, is designed to support mobile devices, and its absence or delay could put a crimp in the plans of a wide range of mobile device manufacturers. The delay could mean reduced holiday availability of new mobile devices, something both manufacturers and retailers would prefer not to miss. Nonetheless, Windows 7 certification is exceptionally important for Microsoft, since the company is pinning future OS development on the Vista/Windows 7 platform.

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Hardware Driver Problems Can Cause Strange Symptoms

Detecting Hardware Driver Failure

At its core, a device driver is a piece of program code. Like any other program code on your computer, your driver code can get fouled up. System crashes have unpredictable effects on your computer, and may result in the loss of data from the hard disk, or a corruption of the existing data that renders a device driver unusable.

The first step is to divide the problem in half. When symptoms first start to appear, you need to decide whether the device or the computer is having trouble. If you can plug the device in question into a different system and determine that it’s working properly, you’re one step closer to the problem, and you know that you should focus your troubleshooting efforts on the computer.

If the computer crashes when you attempt to access the device, or it doesn’t recognize the device when you plug it in, my first step would be to open the Device Manager and verify that the driver is loaded. If it is, but the device is still unrecognized, unload the driver and replace it. Be sure to download and install the latest version of the device driver. Drivers are usually available on the support Web site operated by the device manufacturer.

If the device starts to work after you’ve replaced the driver, you can be fairly confident that the device driver was at fault. The driver could have been corrupted or rendered obsolete by an operating system upgrade or patch.

If replacing the driver doesn’t correct the problem, you may have additional difficulties that you’ll need to correct before you can get back to work. Run the available system diagnostics to check for corruptions in the operating system that may be preventing your device from working properly. If you find issues using one of the disk scanning/repair tools, fix whatever you’ve found and try reloading the device driver again. You might also consider using driver management software like Driver Detective to monitor and maintain your hardware drivers.

In most cases, this should repair the problem. In a very small number of cases, you may need to take more drastic measures like reloading the OS, but this should be considered only as a last resort.

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Solving Windows Driver Problems

Drastic Measures Are Rarely Necessary

There was a time when “blowing away” the offending drive and starting over was the preferred option, but I find that as Windows has become more complex and sophisticated, this option becomes less and less attractive. A driver, while exceptionally important, isn’t so integral to the system that a corrupted driver requires an Armageddon-style approach.

I find that avoiding Windows driver problems in the first place is my preferred method of dealing with this. But how do you avoid driver problems? Drivers can be problematic because they become corrupted or outdated, or a conflict arises between a new OS update and the existing driver. Driver problems can also arise when the wrong driver is installed as the result of a faulty update. Firmware updates can also cause driver problems. I’ve even run into issues where two “identical” computers have different revisions of a piece of hardware. Following an update, one works and the other doesn’t. Few, if any of these things are under the control of the user, right?

True, you can’t control corruptions, or OS updates, or firmware updates, and you can’t help which hardware revisions a manufacturer uses in your computer. You may or may not be able to spot a faulty installation, depending upon how well you know your system. So how do I manage this and avoid Windows driver problems? I don’t.

I rely on driver management software – specifically Driver Detective – to manage my Windows drivers. Driver Detective inventories a system, notes the correct drivers for all hardware components and then monitors and manages the drivers. If a driver becomes corrupted, Driver Detective will load a fresh copy of the driver. If a driver is accidentally (or purposely) deleted, Driver Detective will replace it. Driver Detective also monitors driver updates. When a new driver is found, Driver Detective backs up the old driver, downloads the new one, installs it and makes a copy of the new driver. If the new driver doesn’t perform as expected, or causes unanticipated problems, rolling back to the old driver is quick and easy.

I don’t worry about my drivers anymore and I don’t spend time on a Saturday checking for hardware driver updates. I let Driver Detective do the work and I enjoy my weekend!

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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.

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Downloading Windows Drivers Isn't Always The Solution

Drivers Can Be Just Half Of The Problem

The post provides some good details about the experience most people have when attempting to troubleshoot a problem. Typically, a problem arises that the user swears “just happened!” In reality, the problem may have arisen because of a system update, a driver update, an application installation or some other action.

The user may not notice the problem right away, but eventually, the problem makes itself very apparent. In the case of this post, the problem was that a Windows 7 laptop wasn’t recognizing or mounting USB drives correctly. He tried the standard approaches to resolving this without much success. Part of the standard routine includes downloading Windows drivers from Dell. Since Dell has changed the way it distributes drivers, as the author suggests, you may not get the results you’re used to when it comes to downloading the correct Windows drivers from Dell.

He tried some non-standard approaches, too – again with no success. His research even led him to a freebie (and admittedly neat) software tool called USBDeview, which allows you to see what USB devices are currently in use or have been in use at some time, and also allows you to disable the devices.

The upshot is that all of his efforts failed. Confounding the issue is that some of the USB devices he’s tried are recognizable and the system mounts them with no problem. His ultimate solution was to reload Windows 7. It’s pretty drastic, but as a technician, you do get to a point where you can’t invest more time into diagnosing or solving a problem otherwise. I’m not a “reload Windows” advocate, but I do admit that when you’ve tried everything else in your arsenal and you’re still coming up empty, it’s worth considering.

There’s a good message, at least with regard to downloading drivers. You can’t always rely on the manufacturer to tell you what driver(s) you need. You’ll need to know a bit about your system before you download manufacturers’ drivers. If that doesn’t appeal to you, consider using a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective will do all of the boring work for you – locating, downloading and installing Windows drivers. The driver may or may not be the root of your problem, but you can at least save yourself some time by using Driver Detective to take care of your driver management needs.

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