Keeping your computer hardware drivers updated is one of the kindest things you can do for your computer, and ultimately for yourself. Driver problems seem to crop up mysteriously. One day, everything is working fine and the next day nothing’s working.

Use A Driver Manager To Stay On Top Of Your Drivers

In reality, drivers can fail for a number of reasons. A working driver can become corrupted or be deleted accidentally. You may not realize there’s a problem until you go to use a peripheral device and you can no longer access it or it misbehaves. Bad drivers can also slow down a computer significantly or cause it to crash.

Troubleshooting a driver problem can be tricky, too! If you don’t know what to look for, you can spend a lot of time struggling with non-working peripheral devices. Meanwhile, Windows may not recognize that the driver isn’t working properly, or that it’s missing.

Driver problems can be the result of an upgrade or patch to the operating system. The manufacturer may issue a corrected driver but in the mean time, you may get stuck with the old driver and a host of unusual hardware problems.

Patching the operating system can require you to verify the proper operation of all of your hardware drivers. You may even have to visit the Web site of each peripheral device you own to determine whether the manufacturer has updated its drivers, and you may have to wait for a release to take place.

To simplify the maintenance of your computer, I recommend that you consider loading and using a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective has been downloaded millions of times and is trusted by users worldwide to monitor and manage their Windows drivers.

Driver Detective starts by scanning your computer and identifying your attached peripheral devices. Driver Detective maintains an impressive library of millions of drivers, so it’s highly likely that Driver Detective will be able to manage your drivers for you. Once Driver Detective know what hardware you’re running, it will download, install and monitor the drivers for updates and operation. If an update is released, Driver Detective will download and install the update for you. If your driver becomes corrupted, Driver Detective will install a fresh copy of the driver right away.

The process of maintaining a PC can be time-consuming and frustrating. For the average user, I always recommend automating maintenance tasks like driver management and I’m happy to recommend Driver Detective for the task!

Photo Credit: Arne Hulstein, via Flickr

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, some potential Windows 7 users will have to wait for updated drivers for their hardware and peripheral devices. HP, for example, released a table of supported Windows-7 compatible systems. The company says that systems that do not appear on the table of supported hardware will not be getting updated drivers that will enable them to run Windows 7.

Options For Unsupported Hardware

If you have hardware that is not yet supported with the correct driver, the first order of business should be to contact the manufacturer to see what their driver plans are. It’s possible that a driver for your hardware is in development, so all that’s needed is a little patience on your part.

If the manufacturer indicates that no driver is available and they do not plan to create one, you can ask them if they have any suggestions regarding third-party drivers that may work with your hardware. You can also do a little research to see if other users in your situation have found an acceptable workaround.

If you’re running your hardware with an older Windows OS like Windows XP, you may be able to run XP virtually after upgrading to Windows 7. The virtual XP will use all of your XP drivers, so you may not have to make much of an accommodation for your older equipment. To run XP in virtual mode, your computer will need to have a processor that supports virtualization and these services must be turned on. You’ll also need additional memory and hard disk space available.

If your hardware manufacturer has no driver available, doesn’t plan to make one and there is no third party support for your equipment, your best bet may be to do nothing in terms of upgrading. Not being able to take advantage of some of the new features of Windows 7 may be frustrating, but for specialized hardware, you may not have any other options.

You may also choose to replace your system with a newer system that supports Windows 7 directly. In this approach, you can retain your old hardware in a working environment, and migrate certain functions to a newer system that runs Windows 7. You may also find that Windows 7 opens up new alternative solutions for the functions that rely on Windows XP.

Ultimately, migrating to a supported OS will put you in the best position. Microsoft has already curtailed support for Windows XP and in the not-too-distant future, the company will drop support for this product altogether.

Photo Credit: Randy, Son of Robert, via Flickr