Driver Maintenance Won't Go Away

Driver Maintenance Can Be A Drag

There’s usually nothing to remind you to update drivers; you have to do that yourself. If you’re busy, you may forget to take time to maintain your PC. (Not a good approach, by the way.) If you’re not technically savvy, you may not realize that you need to update your own drivers. You may also know that you need to update your drivers, but you may not know how, or which drivers you need.

This all adds up to the strong potential that you’ll miss out on important or critical driver updates that your computer needs to ensure proper operation and security. Sometimes, important operating system updates like service packs can help you remember to update your drivers. Other times, your computer hardware just quits working, or starts behaving badly. Occasionally, a little overzealous file system cleaning can result in the deletion of drivers. You can also accidentally replace a good driver with a bad or incorrect one, and because you’re talking about bits and bytes, a driver – just like any other data on the computer – can become corrupted.

As I talked about last week, most users don’t keep backups of their hardware drivers. That complicates things somewhat when you need to reinstall a hardware driver for whatever reason. If downloading and installing drivers isn’t something you do regularly, you may not know what drivers your system needs, where to find them or how to install them.

That’s why I recommend Driver Detective as a solid approach to Windows hardware driver management. Driver Detective installs quickly and manages all aspects of all of your Windows hardware drivers. Driver Detective searches for the correct driver and driver updates for the drivers your system needs. It downloads, installs, monitors and maintains the drivers, and stores a local backup of the driver in case the installed driver becomes corrupted or lost.

You never have to worry about missing a driver update when you let Driver Detective worry about handling the driver maintenance for your system. More than one million users have downloaded Driver Detective and rely on it to keep their system updated and trouble-free!

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Windows Driver Maintenance Still A Chore With Windows 7

Driver Downloads Not Always Automated

Even though Windows 7 has automatic driver downloading capabilities – as did earlier versions of the Windows OS – that doesn’t always take care of the problem of Windows driver maintenance. In many cases, you the user still have to go out to the manufacturer’s Web site, download the appropriate driver for your system and install it on your own.

If a Windows driver becomes corrupted, Windows won’t automatically detect this and download a replacement copy. Instead, corrupted drivers still load to the extent they’re able to and cause a lot of strange behavior while you figure out that your driver has gone bad!

In other cases, the corrupted driver causes system crashes and hangs when you try to access the affected device. And some users prefer (for whatever reason) to use a particular version of a hardware driver, usually to avoid conflicts with other software or hardware attached to the computer.

Driver Detective is a much saner way to manage your Windows driver maintenance. Driver Detective can search for driver updates on your preferred schedule, and download and install them seamlessly. Driver Detective also makes backup copies of your current driver installations, so if a driver becomes corrupted, you have a replacement driver available to you immediately!

Driver Detective takes the guesswork out of driver downloads. You don’t run the risk of downloading and installing the wrong driver. You don’t need to remember to check the manufacturers’ Web sites for driver updates, and you don’t spend a lot of unproductive time trying to troubleshoot driver problems.

Driver Detective has been well reviewed by Geek Files and Tucows and more than 1,000,000 users have downloaded Driver Detective for use on their computer systems. Driver maintenance is an unrewarding task, to say the least, but Driver Detective can help ensure that your computer hardware has the latest drivers (or the driver set you prefer) and, a backup for each driver your system uses. Driver Detective can also help you ensure that you choose the correct drivers for your unique computer configuration. Download Driver Detective today and take charge of your Windows Driver maintenance!

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Hardware Driver Problems Can Cause Strange Symptoms

Detecting Hardware Driver Failure

At its core, a device driver is a piece of program code. Like any other program code on your computer, your driver code can get fouled up. System crashes have unpredictable effects on your computer, and may result in the loss of data from the hard disk, or a corruption of the existing data that renders a device driver unusable.

The first step is to divide the problem in half. When symptoms first start to appear, you need to decide whether the device or the computer is having trouble. If you can plug the device in question into a different system and determine that it’s working properly, you’re one step closer to the problem, and you know that you should focus your troubleshooting efforts on the computer.

If the computer crashes when you attempt to access the device, or it doesn’t recognize the device when you plug it in, my first step would be to open the Device Manager and verify that the driver is loaded. If it is, but the device is still unrecognized, unload the driver and replace it. Be sure to download and install the latest version of the device driver. Drivers are usually available on the support Web site operated by the device manufacturer.

If the device starts to work after you’ve replaced the driver, you can be fairly confident that the device driver was at fault. The driver could have been corrupted or rendered obsolete by an operating system upgrade or patch.

If replacing the driver doesn’t correct the problem, you may have additional difficulties that you’ll need to correct before you can get back to work. Run the available system diagnostics to check for corruptions in the operating system that may be preventing your device from working properly. If you find issues using one of the disk scanning/repair tools, fix whatever you’ve found and try reloading the device driver again. You might also consider using driver management software like Driver Detective to monitor and maintain your hardware drivers.

In most cases, this should repair the problem. In a very small number of cases, you may need to take more drastic measures like reloading the OS, but this should be considered only as a last resort.

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Solving Windows Driver Problems

Drastic Measures Are Rarely Necessary

There was a time when “blowing away” the offending drive and starting over was the preferred option, but I find that as Windows has become more complex and sophisticated, this option becomes less and less attractive. A driver, while exceptionally important, isn’t so integral to the system that a corrupted driver requires an Armageddon-style approach.

I find that avoiding Windows driver problems in the first place is my preferred method of dealing with this. But how do you avoid driver problems? Drivers can be problematic because they become corrupted or outdated, or a conflict arises between a new OS update and the existing driver. Driver problems can also arise when the wrong driver is installed as the result of a faulty update. Firmware updates can also cause driver problems. I’ve even run into issues where two “identical” computers have different revisions of a piece of hardware. Following an update, one works and the other doesn’t. Few, if any of these things are under the control of the user, right?

True, you can’t control corruptions, or OS updates, or firmware updates, and you can’t help which hardware revisions a manufacturer uses in your computer. You may or may not be able to spot a faulty installation, depending upon how well you know your system. So how do I manage this and avoid Windows driver problems? I don’t.

I rely on driver management software – specifically Driver Detective – to manage my Windows drivers. Driver Detective inventories a system, notes the correct drivers for all hardware components and then monitors and manages the drivers. If a driver becomes corrupted, Driver Detective will load a fresh copy of the driver. If a driver is accidentally (or purposely) deleted, Driver Detective will replace it. Driver Detective also monitors driver updates. When a new driver is found, Driver Detective backs up the old driver, downloads the new one, installs it and makes a copy of the new driver. If the new driver doesn’t perform as expected, or causes unanticipated problems, rolling back to the old driver is quick and easy.

I don’t worry about my drivers anymore and I don’t spend time on a Saturday checking for hardware driver updates. I let Driver Detective do the work and I enjoy my weekend!

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Troubleshooting Windows Driver Problems

Disable Auto-Restarting

Some people just want to get back to business as quickly as possible after a crash, and that’s completely understandable. The random, not-apparently-related-to-anything crash may happen on occasion, as might a brief power interruption. If you’re having persistent problems with crashes or BSODs, you want to get to the bottom of your problem and get it repaired as quickly as possible.

If you get a BSOD, the error message will have some critical information in it, such as the error name, the error stop code, and the driver that encountered the error. Other than the error name, the rest of the information will be in code. Write down the error codes if you can.

If you have Auto-Restart enabled, the computer will automatically restart itself when it encounters an error. This will quickly eliminate your ability to figure out what’s causing your problem. You can disable the auto-restart feature for troubleshooting purposes, and re-enable it later when you’ve corrected the problem.

To disable auto-restart, you’ll probably need to get into your Setup, which you access by pressing F2 at boot time. Within Setup, you can access your advanced boot options, one of which will be disabling auto-restart on system failure. Once this is disabled, your system will not automatically restart after a crash. That will give you time to examine the crash report and collect potentially useful information.

Microsoft has a resource that explains the error codes. You can find this at
the Microsoft Web site.

Don’t overlook the information you get in the error report about the driver. If you suspect a driver problem, remove and reload the suspect driver. As a longer-term solution, consider installing Driver Detective. This software is an excellent tool for managing Windows hardware drivers. In addition to downloading and installing driver updates automatically, it can detect driver problems and replace a malfunctioning driver before it seriously affects your computer performance.

Driver Detective has been downloaded and installed more than one million times by satisfied users. Download a copy today and eliminate troublesome Windows driver problems.

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Error Code After A Windows Driver Crash: What Do These Numbers Mean?

Getting to the bottom of the numbers

No one, including even the most hard-core tech geek, memorizes crash codes, but there is a way to find out what these modern-day hieroglyphics mean. I suppose the whole issue of deciphering a crash code raises the question: “Why not just produce the error message instead of a string of numbers?” The short answer is that the crash code is what’s stored in the computer’s memory. Deciphering the little nugget of information may exceed the capability of a crashed computer.

Enter ErrMsg. This is a little application that deciphers a crash code and spells out the results in plain English – or at least English that’s as plain as possible. After reading the interpretation, you still may not be able to decipher what caused your crash, but you’ll at least be dealing with words and not numbers!

ErrMsg is free and will translate error codes from any version of Windows, and works on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Knowing what you’re up against is just the first step in fixing the problem, but ErrMsg can shine a light on the actions that are most likely to resolve your crash problems.

For example, ErrMsg might indicate a problem with a file structure, a file pointer or an entire file. These problems might lead you to run the built-in CheckDisk utility to check for and fix file system errors. On other hand, an error message might lead you to suspect a driver or hardware problem. In this case, you might try to remove and re-install the correct Windows hardware driver to see if that helps. You may also check the hardware configuration to make sure the computer recognizes and responds to your peripheral hardware correctly.

ErrMsg isn’t the world’s most accurate troubleshooting tool, but it can point you in the right direction when you have no idea where to go! You can also reduce the potential for problems among your Windows drivers by using a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective downloads, installs, monitors and maintains all of your system drivers, so you don’t have to.

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Outdated Windows Drivers Can Cause Trouble

Always Keep Updated Drivers

To avoid driver problems, one standard piece of advice is to keep your drivers updated. Unfortunately, driver updates can cause as many problems as they can solve! When you’re trying to troubleshoot driver problems, it helps to keep in mind the things that have changed recently on the computer.

If you’ve recently done a system update, installed a service pack or made configuration changes to your system the change could be the source of your driver problem. The old driver may not get along with the new system software, so you may need to look for a new driver or reinstall the old driver to see if that clears up the problem.

If you didn’t do any recent manual system updates (and Windows didn’t install any updates automatically), you may have installed something else that conflicts with your existing driver, or that overwrote a library your driver needs. Try reinstalling the old driver. If that doesn’t work, try reverting to the old setup or removing the newly installed item.

If you recently installed a new driver, but didn’t install any system updates, you may have inadvertently updated your driver without updating the system. In this case, update the system, then re-install the new driver to see if you get better performance. Remember to read carefully any information that comes along with driver updates. You may find that a driver update either doesn’t apply to your system or may conflict with other installed items, applications or drivers.

If you’ve done nothing at all to your system, your driver may have been corrupted or accidentally got thrown away. In this case, reinstall the existing driver and see if your problems clear up.

If you spend a lot of time trying to solve driver issues, you may want to install a driver management program like Driver Detective. Driver Detective monitors and maintains all of your Windows drivers, installs the proper updates, backs up your drivers and your registry and reinstalls drivers that have been corrupted or have gone missing. Using a driver management program like Driver Detective may turn out to be a lot easier than doing driver maintenance manually!

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Verifier Tool Can Spot Windows Driver Problems

Driver Problems Can Cause Crashes

Driver problems can cause a lot of different symptoms, which is one reason they can be so difficult to troubleshoot. Aside from performance problems and obvious hardware malfunctions, driver problems can also cause seemingly spontaneous system crashes.

Since Server 2003/Windows XP, Microsoft has included the Driver Verifier tool to help spot malfunctioning device drivers. Microsoft doesn’t write device drivers; for the most part, that is left up to the device manufacturer. A poorly written driver, however, can cause significant problems for the Windows OS. Since Microsoft doesn’t have much control over the driver itself, it has provided tools that users can access to identify these misbehaving drivers quickly. Verifier may not be able to spot all driver problems, but it’s a good place to start when trouble arises.

Driver Verifier is installed with all Windows installations, however, it does not run automatically. The application itself is stored in the System32 folder and can run either as a command line app or with its graphical user interface. To run Driver Verifier, simply type verifier.exe in the Run box. You’ll need to restart your computer right away, so make sure all programs and documents you want to keep are saved and closed before you start working.

Driver Verifier’s status page will tell you the status of all installed drivers. Windows Driver Verifier will tell you whether your drivers are loaded, unloaded or not loaded. The “loaded” status is obvious. It means that the driver is loaded and appears to be operating. The “unloaded” status means that the driver was loaded at restart, but is currently unloaded. (It has been disabled or taken out of memory.) “Not loaded” means that the driver didn’t load at all when you rebooted your computer. Pay special attention to the “not loaded” drivers. The “not loaded” status may point to a driver has been corrupted or is incorrectly configured. If you see a “not loaded” status attached to a driver you think should have loaded, start your troubleshooting at this point.

Driver Verifier has other functions that are more useful for developers who may be doing system testing or debugging. To avoid clouding your basic troubleshooting efforts, I will leave these functions for another post.

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Symptoms Of Driver Problems

A Dud Driver Isn’t Always A Dead Driver

The first sign of a driver problem may be a Windows error message. Unfortunately, Windows error messages may not be very specific or accurate when it comes to indicating that there may be a driver or hardware problem. Complicating the matter is that some devices are powered on when you boot the computer and some external devices are powered separately. If you receive error messages when you turn on a peripheral device, or the computer cannot reliably detect the external device, that’s a good indication that your driver may need replacement.

If your system crashes when you try to access a hardware device, or behaves erratically when you are working with a driver-dependent piece of hardware, you may have a corrupted driver on your system. If you can never see the device from the computer, or you can see it but cannot access it, this may also indicate a driver replacement is in order.

Poor device function is a good indicator of trouble. This is especially true of video and audio peripherals. If you experience poor sound quality, dropouts, video flashing, poor resolution or other similar problems, consider updating or replacing the suspected audio or video driver.

If you’ve recently installed a new hardware device or driver and suddenly experience problems, the new device driver may be the cause. Be sure to keep your system and drivers updated at all times. Microsoft has gone a long way toward eliminating driver conflicts (very common problem in much older versions of the OS) and resource conflicts, but a new driver can upset the apple cart. The best way to avoid conflicts is to update your drivers and system regularly and apply all OS patches as they are made available.

I recommend the use of Driver Detective for all hardware driver management functions. Driver Detective will track, download, install and archive the hardware drivers required for your particular computer configuration. If drivers become corrupted or lost, Driver Detective will install a fresh copy, thereby eliminating many driver problems.

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Windows 7 Handles Some Driver Problems, Not Others

XP Has No Direct Upgrade Path

If you’re running Windows XP or an earlier version of the operating system, there is no direct upgrade path to Windows 7. That means you’ll need to do a “clean installation.” That involves backing up your data and reinstalling your applications. While this might seem like a daunting task, it will give you the opportunity to evaluate all of the software in your current load. My advice? If you don’t need it, don’t reload it.

For your hardware, you’ll need to do a little research to determine whether your manufacturer has released and updated driver. If so, Windows 7 will often (but not always) install it for you. In itself, this is a time-saver. Dealing with old or missing drivers can be exceptionally time-consuming. Even with the right drivers, things don’t always go smoothly.

The installation process has a few hitches in it, most noticeably one that places the computer in an infinite mid-installation rebooting loop under certain circumstances. This isn’t the universal experience by any means. I upgraded my computer at home (running Vista) in just a few hours with no real issues. Getting the remaining drivers installed and configured, which would have taken an additional evening, was handled by Driver Detective.

I always recommend driver management software. Driver Detective, which has been downloaded and installed by more than a million users, locates, downloads and installs updated drivers for any computer system. After installing the correct drivers, Driver Detective watches over the computer’s drivers, ready to replace old, outdated, corrupted or missing drivers instantly without additional assistance from you.

Finding and installing drivers is among the least-rewarding tasks associated with computer maintenance. Driver updates often sneak up on you, following upgrades and patches. If you don’t have the time to search for updated drivers for your computer, I recommend that you consider letting Driver Detective do the heavy lifting for you.

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