If you’re like many people, you tend to keep your personal computer equipment around for a while. Longer, at least, than most corporations do. Over time, you’ll collect hardware that you may want to migrate with you when the time comes for a new computer running Vista. You may find that your old hardware doesn’t work so well with Vista. Often, this is the result of incompatibilities between the hardware driver and an operating system that post-dates the hardware and its driver installation routine.

Can You Still Install Old Drivers?

All is not lost. In many cases, the manufacturer has written a newer, compatible driver. If that’s the case, you can download the driver, install it and be on your way. If not, you may have to do some research on your older hardware to see if someone’s written a third-party driver that will enable your old hardware to work properly with the computer.

You may also find that the driver may be OK, but the old hardware’s installer routine doesn’t run under the newer operating system. Is there even a fix for this? Possibly. You’ll need to know what OS the old installer you’re trying to run was written for. If it’s one or two revisions out, you may be in luck. You may be able to locate this information on the installer media or with the documentation that came with the hardware.

With Vista, you can try to access the old installer routine using Vista’s built in “Compatibility Mode.” Compatibility Mode enables Vista to look like older versions of the OS – which is what an old installer will be expecting. How can you access Compatibility Mode?

Locate the installer.exe file in your file system and right-click on the file. From the contextual menu, choose Properties > Compatibility. Choose the version of Windows you want to emulate and select the “Run this program in compatibility mode” checkbox. Run the installer and see if it goes. This approach won’t always work, but it’s worth a try.

If Compatibility Mode doesn’t seem to rouse the old installer, you can manually install the driver if you have the stomach for the process, which usually involves unzipping .cab files to search for the driver, and then using the Device Manager to identify and install the new (old?) driver. If that thought leaves you queasy, you can also use Driver Detective to locate and install the appropriate drivers for your hardware. Driver Detective will manage all of your drivers, locate new ones and re-install drivers that have become corrupted or have been accidentally deleted.

Photo Credit: Arild Nybø, via Flickr