It’s easy… almost nice… to blame someone else for a problem you’ve encountered with your computer. Unfortunately, the largest trouble source for a computer is usually the operator! How do you recover from something you’ve done yourself… like loading the wrong driver onto your computer?

Many Actions Can Cause Driver Problems

If you’ve ever had one of those “Homer Simpson moments” … you know… the kind that make you say “D’oh!”… you know what I’m talking about. You’ve done something that’s admittedly stupid, and you’ve recognized the error of your ways a split-second too late to correct it or prevent damage. The damage always seems directly proportional to the ease with which you were allowed to shoot yourself in the foot, too.

This is especially difficult to deal with when you do something unfortunate to your computer. Correcting self-inflicted damage can take hours, sometimes days. The problem can be made more difficult to solve when symptoms don’t occur right away or you don’t know what to do to “undo” your mistake.

When it comes to drivers for the Windows OS, I recommend that users invest in a driver management program called Driver Detective. Driver Detective will automatically located, download and install the correct driver for your computer’s hardware every time. It also backs up your existing driver set so you can easily revert back to your former drivers if you don’t like the way your computer operates, or you run into trouble after a driver upgrade or reinstallation takes place.

Driver Detective keeps working to monitor your drivers once they’re installed. If a driver becomes corrupted, gets deleted accidentally or gets updated by the manufacturer, you’re all set! Driver Detective will replace corrupted and missing drivers, and will locate, download and install driver updates.

You can’t get better service, except from a professional technician. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used more than 1,000,000 times by users around the world and it works hard to keep your computer in good working order.

Using driver management software like Driver Detective is a good idea for users who want to keep their systems up-to-date but don’t have the experience to do this on their own and don’t have the money to pay a professional computer technician to do the work for them.

You can download and try Driver Detective free and it works on any version of Windows!

Photo Credit: Mike Fernwood, via Flickr

Windows driver problems can be frustrating because they’re often difficult to identify. I always recommend using a product like Driver Detective to manage your Windows drivers. Driver Detective will locate, download and install drivers your system needs, update drivers that are already installed and remove drivers your system no longer needs.

Even with the expert management services of Driver Detective, you can still run into driver issues. Most users don’t understand (and don’t want to understand) exactly how their computer systems work. Driver problems can arise seemingly out of thin air, or they can arise immediately after a new piece of hardware has been installed in the computer. They can also show up after the OS or another hardware driver has been updated, installed or even removed.

One good tool for determining the overall performance of your system is called the DPC Latency Checker. This is a free utility that can provide immediate information on the performance of your computer. It can help you diagnose driver problems, though it doesn’t get specific about which driver(s) may be having difficulty. In other words, this tool will point you in the right direction when trying to troubleshoot system problems.

The DPC Latency Checker comes with a tutorial that will help you figure out how to use the program. DPC Latency checker is a small program, and there’s no installing to do, simply download it and run it.

DPC Latency Checker measures how quickly your system responds to your commands. As you open and close applications, DPC Latency Checker will graphically display your system’s response capabilities. Using this tool while you perform certain problematic tasks can help you determine what the system is doing. You may need to disable devices and then re-add them one at a time to determine which devices may be causing difficulty.

Once you’ve located the problem, you can disable the misbehaving device as a temporary measure. If you don’t have Driver Detective loaded, you might try locating the following to resolve the issue:

Apply all OS updates and security patches.
Uninstall the driver for the misbehaving device.
Apply all driver updates and patches for the misbehaving device. Check with the device manufacturer for the most up-to-date driver, and be sure to pay attention to the specific OS requirements of each driver. If the most current driver won’t work with your OS, locate the last good driver for your version of the OS and install that one.

Try the suspect device once a fresh copy of the driver is installed to see if your problem has been resolved.

Photo Credit: jepoirrier, via Flickr

If you’re new to Windows Vista, you may experience problems with your existing hardware or software. You may also experience problems with a wireless network. Some of these issues can be traced back to driver problems, and Windows has a number of known driver problems.

Meeting Driver Problems Head On

If you’re upgrading to Windows Vista and have a wireless network already in place, you may find that you need to download new wireless drivers for your computer. Often, you’ll need a driver that was made specifically for Windows Vista. You can find these at the Web site of the company that made your wireless network equipment. Driver Detective can also be configured to download and install all of the drivers you need for your wireless network connection. You can revert to older drivers if you need to for some reason, so you won’t lose anything by trying a new driver.

Windows Vista’s driver updating service doesn’t always load the correct driver. You may find that you have a video display from one manufacturer, and Windows Vista recommends that you use another driver from another manufacturer. My best advice: don’t do it unless the manufacturer for your specific equipment doesn’t have a driver specific to Windows Vista and you’re stuck for other options. If you find that a recommended driver doesn’t match your hardware, you can go to the manufacturer’s site to get the proper one. Again, Driver Detective will automate the process of finding the correct driver, downloading it and installing it.

Third-party software sometimes works. In the Windows arena, third-party tools have gotten a bad rap because some of these tools turn out to be malicious software. You can find good third-party products that will get your system running, but you’ll need to do some research on the third-party tool as well as the source you intend to download it from. Some sources are notoriously rife with malware. You can usually find information on good third-party tools versus malware by reading recommendations from other users. Before you download or install anything, make sure that your anti-virus and anti-malware software programs are up-to-date.

Finally, you may find that some of your “driver” problems are actually compatibility problems. You’re most likely to see this if you’re running old software on a new computer or new software on an old computer. This is very true with game software and game-related hardware. Check with the software publisher to see if there are updates or patches for your software (or your OS) that will help smooth out the interplay between the software and the OS.

Photo Credit: Ross Imlach