Looking for Windows drivers can be about as fun as looking for your car keys when you’re late for work. It can also seem a lot like searching the desert for water. If you’re lucky, you might find it, and if you fail, you may be in big trouble.

Drivers Abound, Just Not Always In The Right Places

Windows drivers are available by the millions. That’s right; over time, there have been literally millions of hardware drivers written for the Windows operating system. That’s because there have been millions of peripherals designed to work with windows. Everything, from printers to keyboards to specialized hardware, requires a driver to allow the hardware to communicate with the computer.

Drivers don’t just happen and Microsoft isn’t responsible for writing drivers; hardware manufacturers are. When hardware manufacturers don’t write updated drivers, they’re essentially walking away from one of their products. Without a driver, the hardware won’t work properly, if at all. Older drivers might suffice, but chances are good that when an operating system changes radically – like the difference between Windows XP and Windows 7 is – there’s a good bet that a new driver is in order.

There’s no income involved for the manufacturer in writing a new driver for old hardware. Drivers are given away at no cost. Ongoing driver support represents the commitment a company makes to a hardware product, as well as an acknowledgment by the company that hardware can function admirably well past the manufacturer’s desire to continue supporting it.

Many peripheral manufacturers took a flyer on writing drivers for Vista, largely because Vista wasn’t a big commercial success. That approach is now causing problems for consumers who want to upgrade to Windows 7, and who still want to use their older hardware. Many manufacturers haven’t done the legwork needed to write a Vista driver, and the absence of a Vista driver significantly lessens the chance that a Windows 7 driver will be forthcoming.

For its part, Microsoft attempted to head off this problem by including a virtualization mode in Windows 7 that will enable the computer to run Windows XP. In virtual XP mode, the old XP drivers will still work. Unfortunately, the computer’s BIOS must support virtualization – a trick that many aging computers don’t.

If you’ve got an older piece of hardware that you don’t want to – or can’t – replace, and your computer can run Windows XP virtually, you can still access your older hardware and enjoy the benefits of Windows 7. (Just not simultaneously.)

Photo Credit: Andrew Stawarz, via Flickr

There’s nothing quite like the start of a New Year to help you focus on how you can do things a little differently in the coming months. As people take on more responsibilities at work and have less free time, finding ways to save time without cutting corners is important. For busy people, I recommend that they install and use Driver Detective to help keep their computer systems running right.

Driver Detective Takes The Work Out Of Driver Management

I was reading about the cost of printer ink not too long ago, and it seems that no one knows exactly how much ink a cartridge contains or how many pages it will print. In tracking down more information on printer ink cartridges, I ran across a couple of articles on how to find drivers for your printers once you’ve switched to Windows 7.

After reading the articles, my only thought was that the tips the author suggested were rather time-intensive. If a person has enough time to visit the manufacturer’s Web site, locate the correct driver, download it, install it and then verify that the printer operates correctly, it’s one thing. Most people I know don’t have time to do this, or worse, repeat this step for every hardware device attached to their computer. Even worse, this method will need to be repeated periodically to check for driver updates – a notorious consequence of OS patches.

Who has time for that? I know I don’t and I make my living working on computers. What about the people who simply use computers or have them in their homes? I’m a big fan of doing things once – the right way. It saves time, money and aggravation. In the case of locating new drivers for your computer, “doing something the right way” means finding a program that will locate drivers for you – preferably with a high degree of accuracy. Even better, it means finding a program that locates, downloads and installs the correct driver, knows when updates occur, automatically fetches all updates and knows when an installed driver has been damaged or deleted.

Driver Detective is the best of the driver management software programs I’ve found. Windows comes with a load of drivers and can even find new driver updates if it’s properly configured. Unfortunately, Windows sometimes makes mistakes and loads the wrong driver. Driver Detective, on the other hand, has a database of millions of drivers and can easily locate the correct driver for your exact hardware configuration.

In terms of saving time, there’s nothing that beats Driver Detective when it comes to driver management. Unless, of course, you like spending a lot of time looking for drivers…

Photo Credit: James Lumb, via Flickr

If you’ve been using Windows computers for awhile, you know that one of the things you need to do regularly is install updated Windows drivers. You may wonder why your drivers require updating, especially if things are working as they should be. Hardware manufacturers update their drivers primarily for two or three reasons.

Looking Out For Updated Drivers

Updated drivers may be required if Microsoft updates its operating system. I’m not talking about the major upgrades, although updated drivers are almost certainly a by-product of those. I’m talking about the patches that Microsoft puts out now and again. Sometimes, in fixing one thing, the code for an existing driver needs to be rewritten or changed. You may find that after installing an update, a certain piece of hardware no longer works properly. An updated driver may take care of the problem.

Sometimes, security “holes” are discovered that would allow a remote user to take advantage of your computer, install malware or infect your computer with a virus. Updating the driver may take care of a security hole, or make your peripheral devices less vulnerable to this type of attack.

Third, software drivers from the manufacturer sometimes contain errors that the manufacturer wants to correct. In this case, the manufacturer will put out an updated driver to replace an existing one.

Occasionally, the manufacturer wants to enable a new feature or extend an existing feature often thanks to OS updates. A new driver will help an updated computer interact with the peripheral device.

The problem with updated drivers is that most manufacturers don’t announce when they’re going to be released. The average user may not know that an updated driver is available and may only go looking for updated drivers if a problem arises. Windows has been able to detect and download drivers, but many users don’t have their computers configured properly to install new driver updates. In addition, Windows sometimes misidentifies the driver that’s needed. From experience I can say that downloading and installing the wrong driver can be as bad as having no driver at all.
Windows may catch updates, but it won’t catch a misbehaving or corrupted driver, either.

Driver Detective is a driver management program that identifies, downloads, installs and monitors your Windows drivers. If a new driver becomes available, or if your existing installed driver gets corrupted or accidentally removed, Driver Detective will reinstall a fresh copy of the driver seamlessly. I recommend Driver Detective because it does such a good job of maintaining an up-to-date driver library.

Photo Credit: Look Into My Eyes, via Flickr

Driver Detective is the number one choice among PC users running a version of the Windows operating system. Driver Detective works with Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 and will help you find the hardware drivers you need to keep your computer running like it did the day you brought it home.

Users Trust Driver Detective To Manage Their Computers

Driver Detective uses proprietary scanning technology to search for the drivers your computer and hardware need to operate properly. Driver Detective can recognize more than 15,000,000 different pieces of hardware and will locate the exact driver your computer needs. Moreover, the driver comes directly from the hardware manufacturer so you know it will work!

One reason so many people like and use Driver Detective is that the program is highly accurate. Nothing is more frustrating than having Windows tell you that you need a specific driver, only to find out that the driver it has selected isn’t the one you need or won’t work for your configuration. Driver Detective virtually eliminates these miscues that could otherwise prevent your computer from working the way it’s supposed to. Driver Detective gets it right so you don’t need to worry about creating more work for yourself.

Driver Detective not only locates and downloads the correct drivers, it also backs up your entire driver set. If something goes wrong with a driver, it gets lost, damaged or deleted accidentally, Driver Detective will load a fresh new copy of the precise driver your hardware needs.

You can make Windows driver problems a thing of the past with Driver Detective. Driver Detective doesn’t stop working once it’s found the drivers your system needs. After downloading, installing and backing up the correct drivers for your system, Driver Detective monitors the drivers for signs of failure. It also keeps track of updates to your drivers that may become available. When an updated driver is detected, Driver Detective goes to work again to download, install and back up your driver set.

You’ll never go without the drivers you need, or miss critical updates to your drivers that are needed to keep your system running smoothly. Driver Detective is the number one driver management software for a reason. Download Driver Detective today and test it for yourself. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to install and configure, and how well it works!

Photo Credit: Cell105, via Flickr