Microsoft Windows doesn’t always manage device drivers the way you want to. That can lead to significant driver problems over time, and in some cases, it can mask the real solution to a problem.

Loading New Drivers Doesn’t Always Get You New Drivers

When you worked with older versions of Windows, the operating system would overwrite old drivers with new ones when you found, downloaded and installed a new driver. With the old driver safely overwritten, the system had no choice but to use the new driver.

Newer versions of the Windows operating system don’t behave quite in this fashion. If Windows Vista or Windows 7 have a driver that’s working, installing a new driver won’t overwrite the old one, as in days past. Oh, you can install the new driver as many times as you want to, but the old driver will still keep plugging away because Windows sees no reason to give up what it views as a perfectly good driver.

If you’re not aware of this, and you encounter a problem with a device, updating a driver may not get you to where you think you’re going. In fact, you may not realize that your new driver is being ignored by the operating system. You think you’ve installed a new driver. (You’re right; you have.) Windows just isn’t using it.

The moral of the story here is that when you encounter a device that isn’t working properly, and you think the root cause may be a driver, uninstall the old driver first. Reboot the computer, then install the new driver. The same applies when you want to update a driver. Uninstall. Reboot. Install.

Microsoft’s newer approach to driver management – not overwriting the old driver – is something that can confound even experienced users. In fact, experienced users probably get caught by this switcheroo more often than you’d think. If you’re accustomed to thinking that the driver installation routine will automatically uninstall or overwrite the old driver, you could get stuck troubleshooting a non-problem for days!

With a professional driver management software package like Driver Detective, your driver management worries are done. Driver Detective downloads new drivers, but it automatically takes care of uninstalling the old drivers for you. When you download and install a new driver using Driver Detective, you actually get to use the new driver! Driver Detective also backs up the driver, in case it becomes corrupted, damaged or destroyed. Driver Detective is reliable and will save you time when it comes to managing and maintaining your PC.

Photo Credit: Internets_Dairy, via Flickr

With the advent of Windows 7, it would be nice to report that Windows driver problems are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, driver problems are here to stay as long as Windows uses drivers to interface with hardware.

Solving Driver Problems Is Crucial

Driver problems can render a new (or old) piece of hardware completely useless, or they can disable hardware functions. Driver problems can seem to crop up suddenly, especially following an upgrade or addition of some sort, or they can plague a piece of hardware from the day you take it out of the box. There are literally millions of drivers out there. Finding the correct driver for your hardware lies somewhere between science and art these days.

For the last several major revisions, Windows has been equipped with the ability to identify and load the “correct” driver for your attached hardware. That sounds good because it means less work for the end user, right? In practice, however, Windows gets it wrong sometimes, and loading the wrong driver can be just as disastrous as not having a driver at all.

Windows comes with a number of specific and generic drivers, to be sure. For some common hardware, the user needs to look no farther than Windows itself. For other hardware, users must rely on the hardware manufacturer to write and update drivers as needed. When a manufacturer decides that it will no longer update a driver, that decision becomes a kiss of death for the no-longer-supported hardware. The next OS patch or revision may render the unsupported device completely useless.

There’s little the end user can do once a decision is made to drop support for a piece of hardware. Don’t assume that the hardware that’s being dropped is old, either. Many pieces of hardware have lifespans measured in months because the manufacturer has decided not to support the device any longer.

For the most part, however, you can get good results from using a driver management program like Driver Detective to find, install and update your computer’s complement of hardware drivers. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used millions of times to manage hardware drivers.

Driver Detective works on all versions of Windows, and can help keep your computer up-to-date on drivers. Using the most updated drivers can help you avoid more serious problems down the road.

Photo Credit: Percita Dittmar, via Flickr