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one driver will interfere with another driver, and your computer (over time) can accumulate quite the collection of outdated drivers.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!

Photo Credit: Dick Rochester, via Flickr

Whether you’ve gotten a new piece of hardware, moving existing hardware to a new computer, or trying to recover from any of hundreds of potential computer disasters, you’ll probably agree that the worst part of the project is dealing with your hardware drivers. Hardware drivers are pieces of control software that allow your computer to interface with and operate your hardware. A company other than the one that made your computer, or the computer’s operating system often makes peripheral computer hardware, so the potential for problems is boundless.

Driver Management Can Be A Lot Of Work

Managing drivers can be both difficult and time-consuming. Adding new hardware is always a bit of a gamble. What if the new hardware doesn’t make nice with the operating system, or with other pieces of hardware you have connected to your computer?

The opposite can also happen when you upgrade the computer hardware or the operating system but want to continue to use the old peripheral devices. As many new Windows 7 users are discovering, their hardware manufacturers have decided not to provide a driver for older model monitors, graphics adapters, or printers. The hardware is still in good working order and could remain in service if only it had a driver.

Hardware manufacturers have many different reasons for not wanting to support their older product lines. Either the engineering on the hardware is such that writing a new driver would be difficult, or they may simply want to encourage users to upgrade to a newer model. Sometimes, the decision not to support an older piece of hardware is related to the business itself. A company may have merged with or acquired another hardware manufacturer and no longer has the staff in place to support older hardware lines.

Even when a hardware manufacturer decides to support an older product by producing a driver, users can still have difficulty finding, installing and using the driver. The vendor updates drivers periodically, and users can easily miss an update. This may not initially cause problems for the user, but hiccups may occur when the user applies an OS upgrade or patch to the system.

Keeping drivers updated is key to maintaining a working computer environment. That’s why so many people have chosen Driver Detective as their preferred driver management software. Driver Detective locates, installs and monitors drivers to ensure that your system always has working copies of the latest drivers your system hardware needs to operate.

If you haven’t already downloaded Driver Detective, I invite you to try it for yourself and see what excellent driver management software can do for your system.

Photo Credit: Mark Hillary, via Flickr